Let's Play After the Storm

[Inky]

Episode II: Fate starts here, and
Episode III: Final starts here!

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Hey everyone, first of all I wanted to say thanks for all the encouraging comments in my previous threads! I know I didn’t reply to every comment but I really appreciated each one!
(Here is my playthrough of the prequel, Invasion from the Unknown, if you want to read that one first.)

Campaign: After the Storm by shadowm is my favorite campaign. The story is epic, the characters feel real, and the gameplay is awesome. If you haven’t played it, I can’t recommend it enough! (I’d definitely play the prequel IftU first though.)

AtS is divided into 3 separate episodes with 13 scenarios each, and recalls don’t carry over between parts. I hope to do all 3 parts, but it’ll probably take a while.

Versions: Campaign v. 0.9.16 and Wesnoth v. 1.12.6
Difficulty: Hard. I’ll only load start of scenario saves, and make a note of any restarts at the end of each post.

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If you want to request a named unit, post here! You can specify a unit type if you want too. (Though if you’ve read my previous playthroughs you’ll know I’m not very good at keeping units alive, so who knows how long they’ll last )
Available recruits so far are skeletons (which advance to Deathblades or Draugs), skeleton archers (advances to Banebow) and sprites (advances to Dryad or Forest spirit) and in scenario 2 we’ll be able to recruit ghosts (advances to Spectre or Nightgaunt) and dark adepts (advances to Lich or Necromancer).
(As with IftU, probably the most useful units are going to be spectres/nightgaunts/necromancers.)

[Inky]

Episode I: Fear

Episode 1, Scenario 1 – The Skirmish

The defeat of Zhangor.
The destruction of Yechnagoth.
The end of the Chaos Emperor’s rule.

I had hoped all such evil influence on Irdya would be over after all our sacrifices. For a while, I had the conviction that we could somehow restore our world’s past glory.
But I was wrong.

(Short recap of the end of IftU: Our heroes defeated the Chaos Emperor and destroyed the Heart Fortress, but Uria and her demons as well as Mal Hekuba and the Iron Council still remain. Elynia decides to travel to Zocthanol Isle, where the Quenoth elves defeated Yechnagoth in Under the Burning Suns, to gather more information about Uria and Yechnagoth.)

I am Elynia, former disciple of the late Enchantress Niryone of the Ka’lian of Wesmere Forest. But many remember me instead as the Lady of Light, the blessed elf who fought along Argan, the Master of Darkness, and prevailed against the nigh invincible Demon Lord Zhangor.

My love, Argan. Together, we wielded the legendary Union of Light and Darkness against the false god who nearly exterminated the elvish civilization, the people whom I vowed to protect. Our bond was unbreakable. Until fate forced us apart, and Uria came along.

Awesome, Elynia is the narrator now- no more emotional ramblings from Galas!

So strong was our bond that only the power of the Union itself could end Argan’s corruption and suffering.
After so long, I was forced to kill him with my own hands.

There was a time when I was said to be pure of heart, that I was fit to wield this staff that was once Niryone’s. But now, I fear that the evil I have committed could overtake my very soul. Ever since the Union left us, I feel as though I am not myself. I can no longer enjoy a gentle breeze, the taste of food, or fresh water. I do not think I could love again either.

Oh no, I think her entries are starting to sound just like Galas’….


We start off in a small town which is being attacked by some of the Iron Council’s forces.


Yeah, better get your puny pitchforks ready. I don’t think this town’s going to last long…


Galas, saying that makes us look really suspicious…


Though the guards seem to have other matters occupying their attention.


Mal Keshar shows up, and gets the usual reaction.


Elynia applies her feminine wiles.


But I think Glonvan was just too thick to pick up on it.


Fortunately, the town leader Morzey is a much more reasonable guy and lets us in.


Though this does mean that we now have to defend their pathetic town for them.

First, let’s see how our band of heroes has been doing since we last saw them!


Mal Keshar has less HP, but is still a walking death machine.


Elynia is still an awesome +8 healer and slower, and her damage is pretty good too. Her sylvan essence ability lets her hide and heal 3 HP while in forests or mushroom groves. She no longer has illuminates, but this is a good thing since we'll be using mainly undead.


Galas… well, he’s become even more of a waste of space, having lost his leadership ability which was his one redeeming feature (besides his good looks??).



Here’s the overall map layout: the town is in the south, and the enemy leader is nearby in the swampy northwest area.



Here are our recruits. The walking corpse is too slow to reach the battle (and we don’t really need cannon fodder since we have the allies for that) but the other units are all useful here.

Turn 1, Second Dusk


We start recruiting in the southern keep and grabbing villages. I recruited a sprite in the easternmost hex hoping it would be quick so it could grab the eastern village next turn, which worked out.


The enemy recruits headhunters, chaos invokers and chaos invaders. Headhunters can skirmish but are relatively weak. Chaos invaders are powerful melee units, though our undead are quite resistant to their blade damage.
The biggest threats are the chaos invokers since they do arcane magical damage, and all our units especially the undead are weak to arcane.

Turn 2, The Long Dark (1)


We spend all the remaining gold on 2 sprites (I recruited them later, since they can be quick), and start heading north. Elynia will join the main force while the sprite will go east to grab a couple more villages that way.

Turn 3, The Long Dark (2)


Still no battle yet, but you can observe how pathetic the allied army is.


Meanwhile, the enemy army is growing at an alarming rate.

Turn 4, The Long Dark (3)


The enemy army approaches and kills an overeager allied footpad. Mal Keshar can safely remain on the village because these two allied footpads are going to charge in like idiots and distract the enemies.

Turn 5, The Long Dark (4)


And just like that all the footpads are gone and we’ve only got some level 0 allies around. Thanks Morzey, your town guards are being such a huge help here.

In the southwest we lost a skeleton last turn to the chaos invoker. We’ll start by trying to clear out the 3 enemies in the southwest.


Galas and a skeleton archer kill one headhunter and the sprite moves to the village to finish the other. The skeleton does not do a good job of hitting the invoker and I don’t have any more melee units since the other skeleton died, so I just hope the allies will kill or distract it.

Next we focus our attention northeast.


We soften up a couple headhunters and use the skeleton archer to hold the village.

Allied turn:


Hey, these guys are actually doing something! They killed the invoker and a headhunter! These are some awesome level 0 units.

Turn 6, First Dawn


The remainder of the enemy army catches up. Now that the time of day is turning in our favor, it’s time to start making kills.


The experienced sprite finishes a wounded headhunter and we finish another with the experienced skeleton archer.

On the left we use the inexperienced archer to hold the line and help shield the experienced units in the back (he’s probably going to die).

Next we’ll focus on those 3 invokers since they’re the biggest threat.


Galas kills one invoker from the forest – so far so good!


And Elynia slows another invoker for Mal Keshar to finish. Mal Keshar is pretty exposed but should be just fine due to his draining melee attack.

We also made sure to leave open the two nearby hexes so the two allied units in the south can sacrifice themselves help out.

Allied turn:


It worked! Those are some brave ruffians! Hopefully they had life insurance...

Turn 7, First Morning


Yikes, the allied units are gone now, along with our archer in the west. And the skeleton is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Since we’re vastly outnumbered, we’re just going to make a solid formation and let the enemies wound themselves by attacking.


We make a defensive healing formation in the forest, with the weak units hiding in the back.

Just observe the size and health of the enemy army before attacking into our formation…

Turn 8, First Midday

…and after.

In case anybody forgot how awesome Mal Keshar is - six units attacked him last turn, two died and the other four are dying.


Stats so far – we’ve also been helped by the RNG.


Now that we’ve got a bunch of dying enemy units, it’s time to feed some more kills. Galas softens a chaos invader for the skeleton to finish off.


The skeleton archer completely fails at killing the dying invader on the left. We slow the healthy one with Elynia, hoping to finish off the other two next turn…

Turn 9, First Afternoon


But they decide to kill themselves attacking Mal Keshar. Talk about having a death wish!


We kill the two remaining enemy units and start marching on the leader.

Turn 10, First Dusk


He sends out a lonely invoker…


…and we send out Mal Keshar. It doesn’t even seem fair.

Turn 11, The Short Dark


The enemy leader has pretty low HP so we should be able to kill him this turn.


First things first, we slow him with Elynia.


There’s a small risk he won’t be slowed, but Mal Keshar has a 52% chance of killing the leader at full health, so if Elynia misses 3 times I’d take my chances with Mal Keshar.


Fortunately the slowing is a success! Next I try to have Mal Keshar soften but not kill the leader (so I chose the weaker attack) so that a level 1 unit could finish him next turn.


But Mal Keshar finishes him instead. Oh well, you can’t have everything.


Morzey gives us directions to a mountain path infested with undead. We’re not scared of undead though…


…rather, it’s the undead who should be scared of us!




Losses: skeleton, skeleton archer, sprite
Restarts: none


I didn’t manage to level even a single unit this scenario because someone kept hogging all the XP!

[taptap]

Yeah, hope you will reach the point where I gave up AtS and teach me how to continue. What is your take on sprites in this campaign? (Were they changed to magical weapon special?)

[UnwiseOwl]

As usual, Inky, this is a good laugh much appreciated.
Best of luck on your run through AtS. You're a brave soul and I look forward to it.

[Inky]

Thanks UnwiseOwl!

Yeah, hope you will reach the point where I gave up AtS and teach me how to continue.

Was it the Outpost of Hell scenario? I remember Maiklas3000 posted in this forum about it being too hard, but according to the campaign's changelog it was made easier since then, so it should be possible now? (I haven't played AtS on hard before, so I sure hope so!)

from the AtS 0.9.12 changelog:

* E3S4.1 - Outpost of Hell:
* Allow two more charges to spawn on the initial player bases on Hard,
thus matching the number of charges available on other difficulty levels.
* Reduced bonus enemy gold on turn 10 and added a heads-up for the player.

What is your take on sprites in this campaign? (Were they changed to magical weapon special?)

They're the same as in IftU (dryad: 4 - 5 melee (fire) / 7 - 6 ranged (fire) (magical); Forest spirit: 5 - 5 melee (fire) (magical) / 5 - 5 ranged (fire) (magical)).
It's been years since I played AtS so I don't really remember, but I think they're still not very useful here since they're lawful and many of the major scenarios are in caves. I seem to remember using almost only spectres and nightgaunts for much of the campaign.

[Iris]

thumbs up

[Inky]

I just realized that in most of the screenshots the text and units end up being a little too small to read / see what's going on. I'll try to fix that for future posts!

E1 S2 – High Pass

I had not seen the high, snowy peaks of the Heart Mountains for a long time. The last time we traveled through them, one of Uria’s foul henchmen was in hot pursuit: Mal Hekuba, a powerful undead sorcerer of the Iron Triad; leaders of Uria’s cult on Irdya, and the Chaos Empire in Argan’s absence.

Even then, somehow his power seemed greater than Malin Keshar’s own. It would be highly unfortunate for us to come across him now, of all times, as our own necromancer seems to have been debilitated by the ordeal at the Empire’s capital.

Hey, who are you calling “debilitated”! Mal Keshar’s doing just fine! It’s Galas who’s become really useless since last campaign.


Poor Galas is scared already.


Mal Keshar, the group’s babysitter, tries to comfort him.


Agh! That is one thing I didn’t need to see so up close.




I guess if we aren’t killing living creatures, it isn’t fun for Mal Keshar.




There are two undead leaders we’ll have to defeat.


Conveniently, we can now recruit dark adepts and ghosts! Both do arcane damage which is excellent against undead. They both also have extremely good advancements.

The sprites can also do good damage especially during the day, though they’re extremely fragile. Skeletons won’t do much damage but are great as meatshields for the sprites and adepts.

Skeletons archers with their pierce damage are useless here, as are corpses since plague doesn’t work on other undead.

Turn 1, First Dusk


A couple level 2 necrophages are currently hogging our villages. But hey, they’re an easy 16 XP each, so we welcome them with open arms!

We could have killed the southern one with Elynia, but we just have her slow it instead so one of the recruits can kill it next turn.

Turn 2, The Short Dark


The 8 HP necrophage on the village is conveniently one adept zap away from being killed.


Mal Keshar then softened up the other necrophage so the ghost could get the kill. Too bad they didn't send more...

Turn 3, Second Dawn


I recruit a few more units (probably overrecruited a bit) and everyone starts heading out. My main goal this scenario is to level some ghosts and adepts, so I recruit extra since some are expected to die.

Turn 4, Second Morning

We get a glimpse of the enemy army, which is not very intimidating since they’re almost all level 1…


…and Mal Keshar is level 4.


We just form a line and invite the undead to come to the slaughter.

Turn 5, Second Midday


Oh yes, look at all that free XP! Time to start setting up kills, starting with the leftmost skeleton archer.


A bunch of melee units pound on it, so that the dark adept from the back can come and finish it with one shot from the castle hex.

Adepts are probably the hardest unit to level and require some babysitting at level 1, so I always look out for chances to feed them easy kills.


Next we send the sprite duo against the revenant in the south. Since they’re lawful they’re our most damaging units right now.

Despite being made of bone, skeletal undead are highly flammable. The first sprite softens it up so the experienced sprite can finish it and level.


Next victim: the skeleton archer on the left. Elynia softens it up so the experienced skeleton can finish it and level to a revenant.


We then just fill in the front line with ghosts, sighting the first undead leader in the process. You have to admire his fashion sense; the sword sticking straight out of his ribcage is a nice touch.




Why would you admit to knowing someone like him...


So he got killed by the Chaos Empire, and somehow that’s our fault?!


Well my theory is, he just never liked Galas to begin with.

Turn 6, Second Afternoon


Since it’s still day, the enemy undead are barely doing any damage so we haven't lost any units so far. On the right, the experienced ghost we used to shield the level 2 fire faerie got dangerously low on health but managed to survive.

We’ll start off by zapping the northern skeletons with our ranged attackers.


The dark adept kills one skeleton and Elynia roasts another.


The sprite from the south burns a third skeleton to a crisp. We’re probably going to start a forest fire, at this rate.


Next, the revenant softens the wounded archer so a ghost can finish it.

We’ll now focus our attention to the south.


Mal Keshar demolishes a full health skeleton archer, our own archer kills the corpse (his pierce damage is useless against skeletons, so recalling him in this scenario wasn’t too smart) and the fire faerie lights up the skeleton next to her.


We can’t kill anything else, so we just fill in our front lines with sturdy units. On the right, the experienced ghost ran over to Elynia to get healed up, and a healthy ghost took its place.

Most of the green army has disappeared at this point. A very successful turn!

Turn 7, Second Dusk


The blue army from the other northern leader starts to arrive. We’ll focus on killing as many nearby enemies as we can this turn.


The fire faerie is one of the only units which can reach the southern archer so we use her to soften him up so a ghost can circle around and finish.


Mal Keshar zapped a poor skeleton who never had a chance, and the experienced ghost finishes the archer, putting him close to leveling.


Galas kills the corpse in the forest, and I try to finish the bone shooter with a ghost but it doesn’t work so the sprite gets the kill instead.


Finally, some ranged units get some damage into the southern skeleton, our revenant grabs the village, and the wounded units gather around Elynia to heal.

Turn 8, The Long Dark (1)


The bulk of the other undead army has now arrived. We’ll just pick up the easy kills and then form a line.

In the south, a ghost finishes the dying skeleton and in the north Elynia softens another skeleton for the experienced ghost to finish and level.


Our first wraith! They are just as awesome as they look, with their arcane damage, high mobility and good resistances.


Next the revenant pounds on the ghoul, and Mal Keshar moves onto the village to finish off a skeleton. Meanwhile our two expendable skeletons in the south poke on the skeleton archer and shield the other units.

Things look pretty safe here… is what I thought.

Enemy turn:


Uh oh. Mal Keshar’s so OP he kills things in both melee and ranged, and things are off to a bad start with the skeleton getting full hits on him.


Next, an archer tries his luck in ranged. Against an ancient lich. What did he think was going to happen?


The wounded ghoul also decides to join in on the fun.
Come one, come all! See the amazing lich Mal Keshar! (Cost: your life)


Yikes! Another skeleton gets 2 hits in! It’s looking dangerous here!


Like moths to a flame, another skeleton archer moves in and gets destroyed…


…making way for yet ANOTHER archer!

Turn 9, The Long Dark (2)


YESSSS!! Bow down before the might of the greatest lich in all of Irdya!! He singlehandedly demolished most of the northern leader’s army!


Stats – we were actually a bit unlucky last turn.


Elynia moves onto the village and sets up a kill on the skeleton for one of the dark adepts.


After that we just form a line, using the fodder skeletons in front again. I was really hoping that they would have died by now, so I wouldn’t have to keep paying their upkeep.

Turn 10, The Long Dark (3)


Thanks to Mal Keshar’s contribution, the enemy army’s looking rather pitiful right now.

First we’ll clear out the nearby skeleton archer using the wraith.


Next Elynia slows the leader, who was the only threat around, and the archer finishes off a ghoul, which was basically the only unit he could damage with his useless pierce damage.


In the north an adept kills the skeleton on the castle hex, so we can stick our beefy revenant there. Meanwhile a ghost picks up some free XP by ranging the leader.

Turn 11, The Long Dark (4)


First, we’ll put that draug leader out of his misery.


Elynia slows him just to be safe, and then Mal Keshar softens him up (making sure to use the weaker attack so it won’t kill him).


And now he is perfect pickings for this ghost, who levels into a shadow.


We then start clearing out the remaining scattered foes. Our not very useful sprite successfully levels into a not very useful fire faerie.


We’ve also been slowly but steadily feeding kills to the adepts.

Turn 12, First Dawn


The deathblade came out to attack the fire faerie but was unsuccessful, and he’s easy pickings now.


An adept gets the kill on the deathblade, and we get our first dark sorcerer!
Everyone heads north, staying out of range of the guards.

Turn 13, First Morning


It was so kind of the undead to post these unmoving guards all over the place.


We got another wraith, since you can never have too many.

Turn 14, First Midday

We start heading towards the keep in the northeast...


Wait a minute, isn’t Yechnagoth supposed to be dead?! Kaleh & Co. did all that work to kill him in Under the Burning Suns!


We have our shadow kill the banebow in the castle, and everyone else slowly trudges through the snowy terrain to catch up.

Turn 15, First Afternoon


The deathblade guard unwisely left his post and gets zapped by the dark sorcerer.


We stay out of the range of the lich leader, except the fire faerie which is relatively expendable and would do high retaliation damage.

Turn 16, First Dusk


The two fire faeries go and roast a newly recruited skeleton, leaving Mal Ciphan all by himself.

Turn 16, The Short Dark


This time he tries recruiting a skeleton archer, which promptly meets the same fate.

Enemy turn:


Mal Ciphan decides he’s had it with trying to rely on his recruits, and tries (unsuccessfully) to blast the skeleton on the village.

Turn 17, Second Dawn

If you ever find yourself facing an especially dangerous enemy, and are unsure what to do...


Just use Mal Keshar.


Hopefully Mal Keshar doesn’t kill the leader, so we can give someone else the XP.


8 HP left – perfect for a wraith to finish!




There’s a small chance of dying, so I use the 0 XP wraith instead of the one with 20 XP in order to cut my potential losses.


It works!
Mal Ciphan gives us the usual friendly parting speech.




Miraculously no one died, and we managed to level up a small army!
Restarts: none.

[Paulomat4]

Great read again! I love reading your walkthroughs during long ways home in the evening.

[Caladbolg]

Glad to see you back in action and thanks for a good laugh! I see neither your skills nor your wit have gone rusty.

[Inky]

Thanks for the comments as usual!

E1 S3 – Civil War in the North

We rested for one night, and swiftly resumed our travel back to the Far North. With their most powerful overlord gone for good, the undead creatures and their masters roaming about the mountains proved to be little more than an occasional nuisance.

A few cultists dared to challenge Mal Keshar on repeated occasions, but none of them were an appropriate match for his power, however weakened he might be after all these years.
Naturally, their lives were cut short by their futile boldness.

Natural selection in action.

After many days, our trip finally came to an end: we were back in the northern country, safe and away from strife’s grasp. Or so it seemed at first.

Turn 3, First Midday

We head northeast for a couple turns, coming across a human fort.

We receive the usual warm welcome.


More like "we support the undead against our enemies" or "the undead are doing all the work."




Well that’s great – we finally meet other elves and they’re on a bloodthirsty killing spree.




Mal Keshar wisely suggests to just leave these guys fighting amongst themselves. If he were in charge, I bet we’d already be at Zocthanol Isle by now.


But Galas just can’t resist being the hero.




We get to control the humans of the fort (who actually have some decent units!), but since they won’t come with us I’m sure you can guess what’s going to happen to most of them.



There will be two fronts to this battle: fighting the northern elves coming over the river ford, and the eastern elves in the forests near the fort.

Ghosts and their advancements are useful on the northern front since they have good defense and maneuverability on the water hexes, while magical units such as adepts and sprites are good for zapping elves in the eastern forests.

Skeletons and skeleton archers are also especially good in this scenario, since they have very high resistances to blade (elvish fighters) and pierce (elvish archers) damage.


We can also now recruit bats, which are perfect for grabbing the clump of villages in the northeast of the map.


We start recalling our veterans from last scenario, and recruit a couple more ghosts since their advancements (spectres/nightgaunts) are so good. We also get a bat to go grab villages in the northeast.

Enemy turn:

There are several groups of elves from both enemy sides scattered around the map, so they’ll be spending their first few turns fighting amongst themselves.

Turn 4, First Afternoon


How did this lunatic end up in charge?! Though I guess if Galas can become a leader, anyone can…






Galas attempts to reason with her, which goes just about as well as you'd expect.




Once again, Mal Keshar’s got the right idea. Let’s just do the world a favor and get rid of her.


Well fine. We’ll just slaughter all their units for the XP.




The elves are mostly busy killing their own kind, but a couple strays have wandered into our camp. We poke on a poor scout until he’s one adept zap away from death, getting us another dark sorcerer.


Elynia and the bowman kill a fighter in the forest, and Galas recruits a few more reinforcements and then heads over to reinforce the northern front.

Northern front:

Galas can conveniently use the keep right at the river’s edge to reinforce. Everyone just lines up along the shore to welcome the elves when they cross the river.

Turn 5, First Dusk


The elves from the east are still pretty far away, but an overeager captain trying to ford the river gets backstabbed and then burned to death by a fire faerie.


Meanwhile, the bat flies northeast on a village grabbing expedition to make some extra cash.


The northern elves haven’t arrived either; Galas recruits some reinforcements and we just wait for them at the other side of the river.

Turn 6, The Short Dark


The eastern elves are almost here, so we form a line and try to heal the wounded.


In the north, Galas recalls a shadow and runs away to let a beefy swordsman block the keep. The undead stay back because the enchantress' arcane attack would instantly destroy them.

Turn 7, Second Dawn


The eastern elves start to arrive. A wounded rider recklessly charges right in, so he'll be the first to go.


The shadow backstabs the rider to death and we make a line.


In the north our swordsman has a near death experience but now the marksman and enchantress should be easy pickings.


The wraith easily kills the swimming marksman, but the enchantress is a dodging expert and barely even gets scratched, and she is going to fry our wraith unless we do something.


With the way things are going killing the enchantress isn’t realistic (the shadow only backstabs for 16 damage), so we nominate the poor 0 XP ghost to offer himself up to block the water hex. Not every Wesnoth unit is destined to do great things.

Turn 8, Second Morning


In the northeast, our village grabbing bat runs into a mob of scouts from the east (how much gold did Unidë waste on these guys?!) so it will fly north instead to grab a couple villages that way. Amusingly, the scout mob will all head west to Celán’s keep and end up getting destroyed by Celán's units.

Eastern front:

The eastern elves begin their attack.
In the forest, we’ll use our Elf Removal Squad consisting of Elynia, the fire faeries and the dark sorcerors to dislodge the elves from their precious trees. Their magical damage ignores the elves’ high terrain defense, and the two fire faeries are especially good now since it’s day.


First, a fire faerie cooks the rider so the dark sorcerer can finish it.


Elynia fries a wounded fighter, positioning herself so she can heal the other units.


And the other fire faerie almost kills the other elvish fighter. The forest cleanup project has been a huge success!


Next we easily demolish the elves on flatland, with the skeleton finishing the dying archer and the swordsman obliterating the scout.


We then finish the dying fighter with the bowman (I tried to use the adept, but it didn’t hit), and fill in the front lines with the expendable humans.

Northern front:

Our ghost predictably got fried by the enchantress but his heroic sacrifice saved the wraith.


A spearman gets revenge for the ghost by killing the enchantress, the wraith finishes the dying hero, and we also get rid of the archer of the left.

Turn 9, Second Midday


The elves continue to pour in, and the healthy swordsman who was holding the southeast corner of our formation was brutally destroyed by a rain of arrows! Elvish archers being led by a captain are no joke, especially when they get full hits like these two did.

On the bright side, everyone else is still alive – that level 0 woodsman in the forest deserves a medal for surviving the two fighters ganging up on him.


We first try to kill off some of the elves on flat terrain in the south. Unfortunately our back luck continues, and it took two bowmen and a skeleton to kill the wounded fighter.
The swordsman then pounds on the archer, so that a peasant can run him through with his pitchfork. Too bad the peasant probably won't live to tell all his friends.


We need to get rid of that captain ASAP so he’ll stop leading the other elves, so Mal Keshar starts working on him, though unfortunately he can’t kill the captain since it’s day. Mal Keshar’s position in the corner should help protect the other units though.


In the north, the fire faerie duo team up to roast an elvish fighter.


Elynia then slows the fighter on the hill and the spearman pokes on the elvish archer in the forest.

We’re also being flanked by some of the western elves, so we get everyone out of their range. Things are starting to look pretty dangerous here!

Northern front:

We’re having a much easier time here though. Since it was such a nice sunny day, the elves couldn’t resist going on a group swim in the river.


Elves aren’t renowned for their ability to swim though. The wraith finishes off the elvish fighter on the right, and on the left we use the immortal skeleton archer to soften up the elvish archer so the experienced skeleton can finish.
The two bowmen on the shore also take some potshots at the fighter.

Turn 10, Second Afternoon


We got some very good luck on the enemy turn, and the elves only managed to kill the peasant in the south. However we’re still in a pretty tight situation, with many wounded units and a horde of angry elves surrounding us.

The first thing we’ll try is to level the 10 HP bowman, who will level - and more importantly, fully heal - if he can kill the level 2 captain.


The captain has 10 HP left, so to maximize our chances of success we first send in the heroic woodsman to try to hit once so the bowman can finish in one hit.


Well that didn't help. Apparently this woodsman is only good at dodging; he somehow survives but doesn’t even hit once.

We’ll just try our luck with the bowman who has a 54% chance to kill. Come on Connyn, the whole army’s depending on you!


Aaand he’s dead. These guys are really useless. I guess the moral of the story is, never get into a bow fight with an elf.


At least the bowman hit once though, so we can finish with the ghost. The spearman kills an elvish archer and Mal Keshar tries to kill the wounded fighter but barely hits at all.


We then turn our attention to the elvish marshal on the left, who is the most dangerous enemy around.
We nuke him with our trusty fire faerie team, making sure to finish with the more experienced one so she can level.


She becomes a Forest Spirit because those physical resistances are too awesome to pass up.
(The alternate advancement, the Dryad, has 6 more HP and 7-6 ranged damage instead of 5-5 but has 0% blade/impact/pierce resistance, making it much less useful in my opinion – after all, a unit can only deal damage if it’s alive!)


We also managed to kill the western archer with an adept, with the help of the swordsman from the northern flank and a backstabbing shadow.

Meanwhile in the east, the swordsman on the southern village kills an archer, and a dark sorcerer zaps the fighter on the hill and we stick a woodsman in the north to hopefully distract those archers.

Northern front:
How many elves does it take to cross a river?

More than Celán has, apparently. First we’ll try to level the experienced skeleton on the left on the dying fighter.


He misses all his attacks and I stick a revenant into the water to help shield him, even though he really doesn’t deserve to live. Meanwhile the loyalists take advantage of the last turn of daylight and start demolishing the nearby elves, with the spearman even getting close to leveling.


We then backstab the archer to death, and dangle some tasty peasants in the water as a distraction, since they’re not good for much else.

Turn 11, Second Dusk


Things have gotten rather perilous in the east, with all the cannon fodder disappearing last turn and a whole mob of elves still out for blood. Fortunately the elves were busy slaughtering the humans last turn so we didn’t lose any of our own units. Even the experienced ghost barely survived!


We’ve gotten pretty bad luck throughout this scenario, but I also definitely under recruited in the east.


In the southeast, Mal Keshar destroys an elvish fighter from the village, where he is basically invincible, and the swordsman kills another.


Meanwhile, our Elf Removal Squad in the northeast cleans out the squad of archers in the forest.


A skeleton blocks off the two western elves, and several wounded units fly off to heal in the villages. Elynia is a bit exposed, but with her 70% dodge the elves won’t be able to do much to her without magic or marksmanship.

Northern front:

Meanwhile, we continue effortlessly picking off the swimming elves. Like shooting fish in a barrel.


I make another attempt to level the experienced skeleton who failed to hit anything last turn, this time on the druid.


Well, I should have known not to try it since this skeleton clearly has vision problems. Fortunately the shadow can skirmish around and backstab the druid.

We also clear out a couple elves on the right. The shadow is a little bit exposed from 3 hexes, but should survive with his 50% defense and 50% physical resistances.

Turn 12, The Long Dark (1)


The elves have wasted their turn doing rather unproductive things like using ranged units to melee Elynia, and using melee units to range the swordsman.


In the southeast, the ghost tries to kill the dying fighter but it doesn’t hit and the stupid ghost nearly dies again. At least you can always count on Mal Keshar, who instantly destroys the captain from almost full health.


We bring in the skeleton to finish the fighter in the south, and in the north our dark sorcerers obliterate the elves there.


On the left, we managed to have an adept finish an archer.

The remaining eastern elves will be easy to deal with since they'll arrive 1 or 2 at a time. Finally, things are under control on this front!

North:

Hey, wasn’t there supposed to be a shadow next to Galas?! Well sadly it’s gone now, since the three surrounding elves got almost full hits on him. We have plenty of ghosts though (Galas recruited 2 more last turn) and can spend the next 10 turns gathering easy XP for them, so we’ll be able to replace him pretty easily.


Now that it’s nighttime we easily destroy the elves with the undead. Even that blind skeleton finally levels up!


The ghosts and wraiths make quick work of the rest.

Since the main battle is now over, the remaining turns are simply XP gathering on both fronts as the elves trickle in a few at a time, so we’ll skip to near the end.

Turn 20, First Dusk

In the east, our fire faerie unsuspectingly grabbed a southern village last turn…

But it was a trap! An avenger popped up out of nowhere and pelted her with arrows. Typical sneaky elven tactic!

Turn 21, The Short Dark


On the bright side, the dark sorcerer could sure use the 24 XP from killing the avenger. He levels into a lich for the +1 movement point (since he is not quick and I prefer units to have at least 6 movement).


An adept zaps the ranger and levels, and the other dark sorcerer also levels into a lich since he is nonquick. The other adept and dark sorcerer are both quick so will hopefully become necromancers.

Sadly, our experience gathering spree ends next turn with the arrival of the Council.

Hey! What about all the innocent undead that got killed?!


They decide to banish all the elves from the northern lands, including Galas and Elynia.


I guess it’s only fair, since we did about 90% of the slaughtering in this battle. Looks like we’ll have to find another way to get to Zocthanol Isle.


We decide to head to the port of Tirigaz to get a ship. It’s controlled by orcs, but at this point any race that isn’t elves is welcome...




Losses: lvl 2 fire faerie, lvl 2 shadow, lvl 1 ghost. And a lot of humans.
Restarts: One due to unwisely getting Galas killed near the beginning.

[ForestDragon]

Glad to see you returning with your let's plays! i mostly don't care about the gameplay while reading, but rather focus my attention to the humor, with is masterful by the way

btw, funny observation: Mal Keshar, a lich, who supposedly is supposed to be slightly mentally insane, and, at the beginning of AtS debilitated, is constantly showing sings of being pretty much the opposite, being the strongest, and sanest in the entire group

[Inky]

Thanks ForestDragon! Yeah, Mal Keshar is the best!

E1 S4 – Terror at Dusk

We abandoned Aragwaith territory as agreed, never to return. It was a just deal.

The members of the Grand Council stated that no-one witnessed any elf entering or leaving Inodien’s tent. And yet, some people claimed to have heard strange sounds in the forest around the time he was found dead.

Speaking of strange sounds…


We suddenly hear an all too familiar mechanical hiss, a sound which has haunted our nightmares since last campaign.




The campaign’s hardly begun and the Chaos Empire and their drone hordes are after us again! We just can’t get a break.




There are 3 enemy leaders, one in each corner of the map.


Our plan will be to head straight north and quickly take out the northern leader since it’s the closest, and then head west, using the northern keep to recruit reinforcements if needed.

Turns 1 and 2, Second Dusk
(Note: each time of day lasts for 2 turns in this scenario.)


I recall two keeps of assorted veterans and everyone marches straight north. Since it will soon be night for 8 turns, there’s no point in using the lawful sprite units here.
I recalled the slower foot units first, so that they’ll reach the fight around the same time as the fast flying units.

Turn 3, The Long Dark (1)

We scout the northern leader with a bat, and our worst suspicions are confirmed…


These things again!! *traumatic flashbacks to the final dungeon of IftU*


But it’s no problem for our group’s drone elimination expert Mal Keshar, who has rid the world of literally hundreds of these things. He waltzes in on his own and blasts a drone while our remaining units catch up.

Turn 4, The Long Dark (1)


Most of the drones wisely decide to just take a stroll instead of attacking. We’ll clear out the nearby ones and continue advancing north. Drones are weak to arcane damage, so dark sorcerers and especially wraiths are effective against them.


The revenants and dark sorcerer clear out the two southern drones, and two wraiths take out a runner drone. The wraiths are kind of exposed now, but we'll just apply our usual solution to all of Wesnoth’s problems:


Mal Keshar zaps a razorbird from the castle hex, shielding our other units in the process. We also use a sacrificial bat as a distraction for good measure.

Turn 5, The Long Dark (2)


The drones mostly spent their turning ganging up on the poor bat.


We get rid of most of the northern leader’s drones and use a second bat to try and lure the leader out.

Turn 6, The Long Dark (2)


Sadly, the stupid bat died to a single level 1 drone and the leader goes for the revenant on the hill instead.

We have several units which can reach the leader, so with luck we could kill it.


Our units are being especially useless today though. The revenant and spectre don’t manage to hit at all, so Elynia just slows the drone leader and we try to form a line on the hills.

Meanwhile our other units in the east will get rid of the remaining blue units.


We clear out the northern leader’s remaining drones, and move Galas toward the keep so he can recruit some much needed reinforcements next turn, as our troubles are far from over…

Turn 7, The Long Dark (3)


Agh!! Things have gotten really bad, really fast! The two western armies have already arrived, our revenant on the hill got killed by a drone mob, Elynia’s dying of poison, and to add insult to injury all our villages in the southeast are getting stolen.

I turn to another of my trademark Wesnoth tactics for tough situations:


It’s called: everyone run for your (un)lives!!
Everyone retreats, and we try to protect Elynia using Mal Keshar. On the bright side Galas has grabbed the keep and started to recruit some cannon fodder and a couple veterans to help out.

Turn 8, The Long Dark (3)


Sadly our other revenant in the southeast couldn’t retreat quite far enough and got picked off by the drone leader and headhunter (due to being too slow with his 5 movement…natural selection at work). The bat we recruited last turn also got immediately killed by a drone.


First of all we need to put an end to the drone leader’s killing spree. Mal Keshar softens it up using melee so that a wraith can finish it off.


Our immortal adept then zaps the razorbird in the forest and levels up.


Meanwhile in the north, we start cleaning out the units besieging our keep.


Level 1 units in our army really get the raw end of the deal – they get paid less and always end up with the worst jobs. The two skeletons move out front to kill the chaos invader, so they can hopefully distract the enemies next turn.


Galas gets a couple more reinforcements, including another fodder skeleton since the drones seem to like them so much, and Elynia rushes to a far away village to heal the poison.


In the south, a wraith tries to help protect Mal Keshar and the other units from getting completely surrounded.

Turn 9, The Long Dark (4)


Our two fodder skeletons did a wonderful job of occupying the enemies. One of the skeletons is even still alive!


We start clearing the enemies around our keep – the experienced ghost kills the headhunter and the shadows attempt to backstab some drones.


In the southeast, a dark sorceror zaps the headhunter which was ZOCing our wraith, so these units can head north to help.


We clear off some more enemies near the keep, place the dying skeleton on 60% defense so he might survive a little longer, and a couple units go northeast to shield Elynia and get healed.

Turn 10, The Long Dark (4)


Another heroic performance from our fodder skeletons. The dying skeleton in the castle managed to distract two drones before dying – he will be missed – and the other skeleton barely made it. We also lost a wounded ghost.

We should be able to get rid of all of these nearby enemies if we make efficient use of all of our units.


We try to finish a drone in the south with the experienced wraith but sadly it doesn’t manage to finish it. Meanwhile poor Elynia can’t get a break – she gets put back to work after barely getting any time to heal, and gets beaten to within an inch of her life again trying to clear a drone from the keep.


The banebow finishes the drone in the keep, and Galas and the dark sorcerer clear out the chaos invader while protecting Elynia.


The remaining drones are easily taken out with the help of our backstabbing shadows.


Mal Keshar and the skeleton block the two hexes to the left of the experienced wraith so the leftmost headhunter can’t reach; otherwise if we got very bad luck the two headhunters could potentially kill the wraith. (Also, our army is having serious money issues so this is a convenient opportunity to “fire” the skeleton.)

Turn 11, First Dawn


Whew, I thought we were never going to see the sun again! There are only 3 units nearby now.


The experienced wraith finishes the drone and levels up, and the two shadows will continue their backstabbing spree on the headhunters.


Everyone gathers around Elynia for some much needed healing, and several units will head south to take back our villages.

Turn 12, First Dawn


We start our long journey westward, encountering very little resistance along the way.

Skipping ahead a few turns…

Turn 16, First Midday


We close in on the northwest drone leader. Drones are pretty easy to deal with, when they aren't surrounded by a zillion other drones as they usually are.

Turn 17, First Afternoon


Death to all drones!! Our awesome spectres make quick work of the leader even though it’s day.

Turn 19, First Dusk


We close in on the final leader, a chaos lorekeeper. His arcane damage would instantly destroy our ghostly undead so we make sure to keep them out of the way for now.

Turn 20, First Dusk


We soften up the leader with Galas, and surround him with units he can’t kill in one attack.

Turn 21, The Short Dark


And now that’s it’s night, the leader is easily backstabbed to death.


Darglen decides to be very unhelpful, and kills himself rather than talk.




More importantly, so long as the Chaos Empire exists, so will those irritating drones.


Argh, don’t jinx us. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to be seeing plenty of those drone hordes in the future…




We end up with a slightly low gold carryover due to getting a ton of villages stolen.


We also got some pretty bad luck with damage inflicted.
Losses: Lv. 2: 2 revenants. Lv. 1: a ghost, 3 skeletons. Lv. 0: 3 bats
Restarts: none

[Inky]

E1 S5 – Bay of Tirigaz

As it turned out, our arrival to Tirigaz could not be more timely.

Oh great, it’s everyone’s favorite Wesnoth enemies: saurians!








Galas’ crew arrives just in time to save the day!




Looks like we’ve got ourselves a pest extermination job (the usual), and we also need to babysit Vuruk (another usual job for our group, sadly).


In addition to protecting Vuruk we also have to protect the orc ally’s northern villages from getting captured. Can’t the orcs do ANYTHING on their own?!




One of the saurian leaders, Rishix, is just to the northwest of our starting keep so our plan will be to rush him and then use his castle to defend against the later attacks.


There are also 4 shipwrecks scattered around the bay, which will give some gold when we move any unit there (bats are perfect for this).

Turn 1, First Dawn


Here’s Rishix, the saurian leader directly northwest of us. There are conveniently already some allied orcs here to act as distractions. Saurians are weak to blade (skeletons), cold (dark sorcerers) and fire (sprites) so these will be our main recruits.


Skeletons have 60% resistance against both the saurian skirmisher’s pierce damage and the augur’s cold damage, making them so good against saurians it’s unfair. Sprites and dark sorcerers are also useful for zapping saurians on high defense terrain with their magical attacks, and sprites are actually quite good in this scenario since much of the battle takes place during daytime.

Turn 2, First Morning


Elynia and Mal Keshar go ahead and attack, we recruit a second keep and everyone rushes northwest.

Turn 3, First Midday


Oh no, Ishkaal’s bringing in some pet sea creatures to help. Having deadly sea monsters as pets seems to be all the rage in Wesnoth.


Hey, haven’t you heard of what happened in Dead Water? A whole army of undead got wiped out by a cuttlefish! Okay, some mermen may have helped a little.


Whoa, 92 HP on a unit is just not fair (unless the unit is Mal Keshar of course).


We turn our attention back to Rishix and his absolutely pathetic army (several saurians already died from attacking Mal Keshar last turn). We’ll just start by clearing out the nearby wounded units.


A wraith kills the northern bat and we start killing off the wounded skirmishers in the south, while poor Rishix looks on in bewilderment.


The rest of the army catches up, and Mal Keshar starts working on Rishix.

Turn 4, First Afternoon

We send our bat north to grab some of that useless orc ally’s villages.


Ugh, what kind of ally is he?!! He has like a zillion villages and won’t share even though we’re doing all the work here. Greedy orc!


I would sure hate to be Rishix right now. Our army is right at his doorstep, and Rishix is mostly stuck with bats (wounded bats too, since the dumb bats decided to gang up on Mal Keshar last turn).

But worst of all for Rishix…


…is that he was right next to the god of death, Mal Keshar. Bye Rishix, we hardly knew you!


We then start finishing off the remaining enemies here. Magical units like the sprites are perfect for frying saurians on hills or castle terrain.


Despite some back luck with inflicting damage, our army is basically unstoppable and we kill off almost all of Rishix’s remaining units.

Turn 5, First Dusk


The southern saurian forces have started to arrive, along with the fleet of sea monsters. Fortunately for us, we’ve just found ourselves a nice cozy castle, so we’ll just move our units into the castle and defend.


We start moving into our new fortress, blasting the nearby enemies while we’re at it.


Elynia and Mal Keshar get on flat terrain to fry a couple saurians south of the castle, since they’re so awesome they can do whatever they want.


Some expendable level 1 undead shield the duo in the south, everyone else retreats to the castle and villages, and Galas recruits another skeleton in the northern castle hex.

Turn 6, The Short Dark


Oh no, he’s got MORE pets. Did he inherit Growloff’s collection or something? He summons several water serpents in the south this time.


Meanwhile, one of the cuttlefish has gone north to kill a goblin swimming in the water. (Why the idiot goblin decided to take a dip in sea monster infested waters in the first place, is something that I guess we’ll never know.) We try to use our bat as bait to lure the cuttlefish east onto land and away from Tirigaz and its villages.


Meanwhile the southern saurians continue their siege of their former comrade’s castle. Being surrounded by saurians at night should be scary, but this siege is rather pathetic – not even the cannon fodder level 1 units are in danger.


We start killing our way through the mob.

On the left, we bring in the immortal dark sorcerer to zap the dangerous Lv. 3 saurian flanker.


The southern skeleton on the village kills an augur, and everyone else retreats north to the castle.


Galas recruits another fodder skeleton in the NW castle hex, and then switches places with the wounded dark sorcerer so the sorcerer will only be exposed to 1 hex. Against saurians it’s always important to ctrl+v (show enemy moves) at the end of each turn to make sure none of the fragile units are too exposed.

Turn 7, Second Dawn


Our bat in the north is a dodging champ! He’s miraculously survived, and successfully lured the cuttlefish onto land where the orcs will make short work of it.


Meanwhile in the castle, the saurian siege has mostly died out, after killing… nothing at all. Ha, stupid lizards!


In the southeast we gang up on an augur and turn it into a corpse using the necromancer’s plague staff. Free cannon fodder, and the corpse is pretty cute too.


Mal Keshar unleashes his wrath upon the cuttlefish on the sand, who is easy prey.


Elynia and the sprite clear out the two saurians south of the cuttlefish, so a skeleton can move in and finish.


We then stick a wounded skeleton in the northwest as a distraction, and Galas recruits yet another fodder skeleton in the SW castle hex- it’s extremely convenient how we can recruit right into the middle of the battle.

The southern units form a solid wall against the skirmishers.

Turn 8, Second Morning


Another pathetic showing for the enemies, who still didn’t kill anything. The most dangerous enemies are the serpents, but they do pierce damage which is worthless against our skeletons.


Just imagine how one sided this battle would be if we had gotten positive luck.


The first course of the day is the tasty water serpent in the north, which we soften up with the forest spirit and bone shooter so the sprite can fry it and level.


We then clear out some saurians so we can start working on the sea serpent. Due to its massive HP it even manages to survive the legendary Elynia + Mal Keshar duo.


We place our 1 HP bat in front of the fire faerie to guarantee her survival; otherwise both the sea serpent and water serpent could attack the fire faerie who is only on 40% defense.

In the south, Galas finishes off another serpent and we place the corpse in front as bait. We’ve even got plenty of orc allies around for extra fodder.

Turn 9, Second Midday


The serpents made the strange decision to attack Mal Keshar and Galas last turn, so they are just easy pickings now.


First we do a little treasure hunting with our bat. Free money! There’s also an enemy bat heading north towards Tirigaz, so we send our fire faerie north to intercept. Fortunately the enemy bats are easily lured away with units.


Meanwhile, our bone shooter finished the dying sea serpent and is almost leveled now, and the northern water serpent was finished off by Vuruk.

A wraith then moves in to hopefully finish the southern serpent, discovering 2 gold from another shipwreck in the process…which is better than 1 gold I guess?


The wraith must have been REALLY upset about the 2 gold because he misses 4/4. Instead an experienced skeleton finishes the serpent and levels, and we start moving south.

Turn 10, Second Afternoon


We lost a worthless skeleton to the flanker last turn, but now the flanker is just easy XP.


The flanker kindly donates 24 XP towards leveling our shadow.


Meanwhile in the south, there was mostly just a bunch of mud, which we quickly cleaned out.

Turn 11, Second Dusk


The remaining enemy leader unwisely leaves his keep, reducing his already drastically short lifespan by doing so.


First we do a little more treasure hunting with the bat. 25 gold is definitely better than the 2 gold we got earlier…


It’s a bit dangerous with two flankers around, so we make it a bit safer by wiping one flanker right off the map with Mal Keshar.


We slow the second flanker with Elynia and ZOC the leader so we can kill him next turn. We don’t want to kill him now, as there’s one more treasure ship we want to pick up.

In retrospect, the move with Elynia was rather risky, because I didn’t notice that another flanker wayyy in the southwest could actually reach her too.

Turn 12, The Long Dark (1)


Whew! Elynia does a nice job dodging and survives the flanker attack.


Our bat grabs the final treasure – totally worth it this time! I would ask why shipwrecks seem to be such a common occurrence in this bay, but with all the sea monsters we just saw I think we already have the answer.


Our necromancer / dark sorcerer duo zaps the flanker in the swamp, and Elynia softens the other so Vuruk can get the kill.


And a bunch of melee units gang up on the weak leader. An easy victory!






Oh, so he’s just gonna ditch us after we fed him ALL that XP?!! Grrr, that ungrateful little….






Well, at least we’ve got ourselves a ship now. Onward to Zocthanol Isle!




Losses: a skeleton
Restarts: none

Cutscene (E1 S6 – Quenoth Isle)

True to his word, the orcish lord gave us the fastest transport ship in his possession; he also provided us with an experienced crew and many select warriors, and enough provisions for months of travel across the sea. However, he adamantly refused to allow us to hear the news brought by the messenger we saved, and evaded our inquiries about what prompted the conflict between Tirigaz and the saurians. To be fair, there is usually no reason why that sort of trivial quarrel should concern us, but the circumstances were strikingly suspicious.

With Mal Keshar’s help, I managed to pinpoint the approximate location of Zocthanol based on a faint, dark presence towards the southwest — surely a lingering remainder of Yechnagoth’s power.

Elynia and Galas start exploring the island, which seems deserted.




Oh yes, I remember that scenario (Under the Sands from IftU) all too well…it had drones AND invisible skirmishing backstabbing pests!!


Our conversation is interrupted by a bunch of elves doing that annoying elvish thing where they suddenly pop out from the forests.






Don't our pointy ears give it away??


That’s actually not a bad guess.


Wait a minute...


Whoa, Elynia is almost as awesome as Mal Keshar! Almost.






Well, it worked - we get to go meet the leaders of the Quenoth elves.

***


Galas and Elynia introduce themselves.






(This refers to Kaleh and the Quenoth elves defeating Yechnagoth at the end of Under the Burning Suns)






The elves agree to help, not that we even need their help since we already have awesome undead.


Elynia manages to convince the leaders to let us bring our undead and orc allies to the island.


Well, it’s about time for the obligatory massive cave scenario (and by “the” I mean “the first of many”).

[Sudipta]

I was gone for half a year and looks like i missed a lot of stuff.. Real life got in the way.

Inky's Back! and with the much awaited AtS LP! Time to end my long wesbreak

Best of luck for your playthrough. I hope u manage to complete it as spectacularly as u did your other LP's....

Btw, Whats even more annoying than drones ?

Spoiler:

Lv 3 War Drones!! Watch out for those

[Inky]

Thanks Sudipta! Welcome back to the forums!

E1 S7 – The Search for the Past

We were told Yechnagoth originally controlled a citadel in the heart of Zocthanol, where her body resided. Although both the body and the citadel were destroyed by Kalehssar’s people, we suspected that there was much more to find deep under the earth.

On the next day, we descended into the caves nearby to search for more remains of the place. As I expected, we found some unusually clean walls concealing an entrance to a larger underground complex forgotten by time. As we proceeded further into the forbidden realm lying beneath what once was Yechnagoth’s throne, it became evident that Argan, or whoever first settled Zocthanol, had received some help to build it all.

Our heroes decide (as they often do...) that they’ve had enough of nice fresh air and sunshine and decide to enter a dark and gloomy cave instead.


We also get two new nuisances to babysit allies, an orc warrior and a (lawful…) Quenoth marksman.


EXACTLY


Look at that pathetic HP and that pathetic damage. Mal Keshar could kill her with melee!




Amazingly, Galas displays some leadership and shuts everybody up.








We can now recruit orcs, but it’s pointless since undead units are so much more awesome. Also since this is a very long cave scenario, it’s best to use only flying undead.

Turn 1


One keep is plenty for this scenario, which isn’t too difficult. I also get a bat for scouting.

Turn 2


We meet a couple bats and some of my favorite enemies, the leech, which kindly just stay put and let you kill them at your leisure (my favorite enemy is, of course, the Door.)

Turn 3


We start farming the leeches for XP, and encounter some more easy XP in the form of giant ants. I’m liking this cave so far!

Turn 5


We continue north and meet a dread bat, which is slightly more threatening at level 3…

Turn 6


…though that just means, 3 times the XP!


Continuing the “pest” theme, we come across a spider.
I think Horo is scared?

Turn 8


We start working on the spider. And hey, there are some more leeches around to farm!

Turn 9

Continuing past the spider’s keep…


Whoa, there’s some kind of skeleton party going on in the tunnel!

Turn 11


Our wraiths have a field day picking off skeletons, which are extremely weak to the wraiths’ arcane attack but attack the wraiths anyway.


The biggest threat here is that a powerful unit like a spectre will get chain attacked by a zillion skeletons, so we put the less damaging units in front to prevent this.

Turn 12


For some reason the ghosts thought it was smart to attack Elynia in ranged, so they’re gone now.

The remaining skeletons are just easy pickings.


Very easy.

Turn 13


We spot another leader, which is actually pretty dangerous.

Turn 15


He also keeps spamming skeletons, so we send in our skeleton control crew (aka Mal Keshar).

Turn 16


In retrospect it was probably a bad idea to put Mal Keshar on 40% as the leader could have killed him, but fortunately the leader doesn’t want to take his chances.


But it only means the leader will die just a little slower, as Mal Keshar zaps him into oblivion.

Turn 17


Continuing south… more leeches and ants! Free XP for all!

Turn 18


We come across a suspicious looking dead end cave. Interesting that a MUSHROOM is one of the most threatening enemies in the entire cave.

Turn 20


We manage to get the useless archer to kill the mushroom, and continue south.

Turn 21


What kind of security system is this? It really doesn’t seem very difficult to get through…


The glyph opens a passage to the west so everyone has to backtrack since the glyph cave is a dead end.

Turn 22


There are a couple water serpents, one of which decides to try out being a Land Serpent.

Turn 23


It doesn’t end well for the Land Serpent. Kyara is finally on her way to becoming a little less useless!

Turn 24


An idiot wraith manages to completely miss the serpent while getting hit twice, but fortunately the serpent is even dumber and kills itself attacking Mal Keshar next turn. Lucky break!

Turn 25


We come across a corridor with more useless enemies.

Turn 27


There was a demonic hound hiding here too – sneaky! Though, all you have to do is dangle a spectre in its range and watch it kill itself the next turn.

Turn 29


Ah here it is, my favorite Wesnoth enemy! This cave is awesome.

Turn 31


We come across a bunch of ghouls hanging around.

Turn 32


And the ghouls decide to attack specters in wraiths in melee. Bad idea! We easily clear them out and start exploring the lair.

Turn 34

The northwest room has a couple story glyphs.




So does the southwest. (The blue glyphs are just for healing.)






The southeast chamber has the glyph we’re looking for.




Elynia moves to the glyph…

Cool! A free spell!




Wishful thinking…


WOW! Galas is being the smart one here!!





I guess… it worked?

***
Our heroes gather together for a very long plot exposition.











Uh oh, that’s a subject you shouldn’t bring up near Elynia…






Whoa! As awesome as Mal Keshar is, I’m starting to fear for his safety…




Even the great big orc is scared!


Galas prudently changes the subject.






Really pushing your luck there, Galas…






Poor Mal Keshar. He has to do everything, even READ for the rest of the group.


Wow! In addition to giving out a bunch of free XP, this cave also gives out tons of cash!


Restarts: none


Thanks to all the free XP, we managed to level a ton of our units!