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

[Graziani]

Hi, I almost finished the campaign (I'm at Die is cast) and I loved this campaign.

What I liked is that you really feel like you're experiencing a great adventure, like in UTBS for example. We start with a catastrophic situation and a total defeat. We become friends with the dwarves, but these dear dwarves are both our saviors and our tormentors. We live with the dunefolk their lack of light, we would like to get them out of these caves as soon as possible! The return to the desert lands is absolutely well done, with this underlying threat posed by the religious extremists who seem to have spread throughout the continent. I really vibed alongside Khafir and his friends until the end, and I loved the reunion with the father in this strange place that are the sewers.

And the two dwarves. Ha! Brilliant . With their little accompanying music. I love those two! They are not warriors. They do not judge the humans who fled the dwarven kingdom. They are two explorers, two friends, who have seen it all, who do what they are asked with warmth (and professionalism!) and the chemistry between them is perfect. When they blow up the walls of the sewers, I expected it to be a mistake on their part, but no, they had everything planned and arrived at just the right time!

Regarding the gameplay, I would say that the campaign is extremely varied with very different situations occurring extremely regularly (exploration of the sewers, prisoners guarded by the merfolk with explorable underground, the double map of Battle at the border, the fortress to hold against the monsters in the depths of the dwarven realms with their burrows to close etc...).
In relation to this, I find it successful and it's what allowed me to hold on throughout the campaign, stimulating my interest.

However, I would say that I often found certain scenarios too difficult, the expert level is definitly justified.
I would also say that the first levels outside the lands of the dwarves, orcish territory and orcs strike back, are so large, violent, intense that I almost stopped the campaign, thinking that the rest of the campaign would be like this all along. These were two extremely long/difficult/massive scenarios with a huge number of units. Which does not diminish the strategic interest they offered, but because they were following each other, I clearly remember that when the scenario orcs strike back started, I almost stopped halfway through because of the magnitude of the battle. That's also why I haven't finished the last level yet (the defenders have so many units !!).

Concerning the dialogs, sometimes you get very few lines in entire scenarios and sometimes you get the exact opposite, I felt sometimes this mass of information can be confusing. Apart this, it is very well written, a beautiful story.

Anyway, apart from a few exceptions, I really felt that each scenario offered different mechanics and stakes and it was very pleasant.

I would say that the additional music matches completely with the campaign, to the point that when original game tracks are played, it seems disconnected from the emotional/narrative stakes that are unfolding.

In the scenario Familiar Landscape, the eagle speaks. This is probably the case elsewhere as well. I think that rather than correcting all the events of the campaign (I saw that other people had reported the same problem), a simple macro could do the trick (if it's not already the case).

Perdon my poor english, and thanks for your work !

Yes, huge thanks for this memorable adventure I'm gonna play your other creations.

[skeptical_troll]

Hi! Thanks for taking the time to write your detailed impressions of the campaign, it really made my day! I guess I still feel attached to it after years of publishing it. I'm glad you enjoyed it despite the length and challenge of some of the levels, I kind of agree its main limitation is that some scenarios drag a bit or are a bit packed with dialog/info dump, but I'm not brave enough to undertake a massive overhaul and risk making it worse. Besides that being a lot of work, of course

In the scenario Familiar Landscape, the eagle speaks.

damn I thought I did put filters for that, but apparently I missed some of them. Part of the issue was that I wasn't too careful about keeping the poor bird alive for more than a couple of scenarios while doing the playtesting
Hope you successfully finish the last battle!

[Lord-Knightmare]

In 1.18, I downloaded your addon. There is this RFTA_Music addon but it's not listed as a dependency. Is this intentional?

[skeptical_troll]

No, it isn't intentional My previous laptop broke and lost the server file so I had to re-write it and forgot about dependencies (the same happened with TWLP). Thanks for reporting it!

[Konrad2]

No, it isn't intentional My previous laptop broke and lost the server file so I had to re-write it and forgot about dependencies (the same happened with TWLP). Thanks for reporting it!

You seem to have pushed a fix 20 min ago, but the new add-ons still have the music depencies and no music on the server. :c

[skeptical_troll]

Yeah, matching the name of the dependency and the music add-on took me more than it should. Hopefully it works now.

[arabark]

Great campaign!
In my opinion "The Occult Ridge" is too difficult. I can't come up with a reliable and not dependent on luck strategy.
I think it may be a bug. I couldn't see AI moves at the beginning of "Assault at the Border".

TBfW 1.18.0
RftA 1.1.14f
Wayfarer (Difficult)
44/80 Recruits remaining
26/30 Mounted recruits remaining

[skeptical_troll]

Hi Arabark

I think it may be a bug. I couldn't see AI moves at the beginning of "Assault at the Border".

thanks for reporting. It didn't happen in the previous Wesnoth versions, so I presume something changed in the logic of how AI moves are shown to shrouded sides when allied sides don't share view. I uploaded a fix for that, update the campaign and you should be able to play the scenario seeing the AI moves. Alas, the price to pay was to give up the dramatic effect of not seeing Faylazur's area when playing Khafir's side and vice versa, but life is that cruel.

In my opinion "The Occult Ridge" is too difficult. I can't come up with a reliable and not dependent on luck strategy.

I imagine that's because of some fire guardian excessive spawning, right? That part is also a bit luck-dependent, I remember at the time I was playing around with unit spawning and both that and the parallel scenario might have some problem of high difficulty variation between one playthrough and the other. Capping fire guardian's number might be an option.

[gnombat]

thanks for reporting. It didn't happen in the previous Wesnoth versions, so I presume something changed in the logic of how AI moves are shown to shrouded sides when allied sides don't share view. I uploaded a fix for that, update the campaign and you should be able to play the scenario seeing the AI moves.

Is that the same as this bug?

viewtopic.php?p=687871#p687871

life is that cruel

Yes, it is (and new Wesnoth versions can be very cruel indeed to UMC) but it might be worth filing an actual bug report, especially if this is something that is affecting multiple different campaigns...

[arabark]

Hello.

I uploaded a fix for that

Thanks, it works.

I imagine that's because of some fire guardian excessive spawning, right? That part is also a bit luck-dependent, I remember at the time I was playing around with unit spawning and both that and the parallel scenario might have some problem of high difficulty variation between one playthrough and the other. Capping fire guardian's number might be an option.

There are multiple reasons for that. The highly random spawning is one of them. I can recall my high level units then the enemy is also strong and I risk to lose many of my valuable warriors. Or I can recruit novices then my army is to weak to fight the copies and fire guardians at the same time or even just assassinate the enemy leader and escape. The AI plays defensively and doesn't want to attack on my conditions. I have lack of turns trying to split the army of copies or lure them into a trap and I quickly get overwhelmed by the elementals. I usually use my falcon as a bait but only if Faylazur can't reach him or the poor bird is doomed. Some of my attempt were flawless victories but some were total defeats . I think the best units for this scenario are the luminary and wayfarers.

[skeptical_troll]

Is that the same as this bug?

indeed, by the sound of it, it's the same issue. I honestly don't know if it's a feature or a bug, I interpreted it as 'before AI moves were shown according to the previous human-controlled side, now according to the next'. Of course, I've no idea why that change would be necessary, I'm not that much into Wesnoth development so I just assumed there's some logic behind it.

There are multiple reasons for that. The highly random spawning is one of them.

Obviously, a perfect material balance between humans and AI should be strongly favourable to the human (at least at the current state of Wesnoth AI), that's why I added the fire guardians. I intended them to be a nuisance to sway the balance but I guess they could get worse than that