Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Feedback for the mainline campaign Heir to the Throne.

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geronimo23
Posts: 3
Joined: April 4th, 2023, 1:15 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by geronimo23 »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
iPad 1.14 - Novice
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
11
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
quite clear
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
clear - but dialog/story somehow dull - how can it happen to be suddenly surrounded by undead in every direction?
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
survive in ANY way... simply not possible
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
-10 (minus 10)
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
those 2 potions are simply a JOKE - one would need 10!

Sorry, but I managed all scenarios before in good order, levelled my troops, got archmage, 2 white mages, 3 paladins, 2 elf heroes, 2 druids, and several other units short before levelup - and then THIS scenario - sorry, but it was designed to utterly break my whole army and make me loose all my units!
NO fun at all!
I tried ALL strategies - staying at the keep, complete nonesense, it does not even have enough space for my army, and everyone unit outside gets slaugthered right away the undead arrive. Moving to the west-lake, not making any sense, as the undead have flying units, aporaching over the water, no bottleneck at all.
anyway, the undead ALWAYS attack with weapons I cannot defend, or even attack them, at night the whole things is a slaughter, and i do not even make it until daylight of day 2, my army and/or one of my main chars gets killed until turn 7
Marching south to kill the lich (for what reason, what would that help? there is not major re-supply from them) my army gets heavy wounded by those undead and the other 2 army approach and clean me up

right now, this scenario
Konrad2
Forum Moderator
Posts: 3333
Joined: November 24th, 2010, 6:30 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by Konrad2 »

geronimo23 wrote: April 4th, 2023, 1:26 pm (1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
iPad 1.14 - Novice
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
11
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
quite clear
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
clear - but dialog/story somehow dull - how can it happen to be suddenly surrounded by undead in every direction?
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
survive in ANY way... simply not possible
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
-10 (minus 10)
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
those 2 potions are simply a JOKE - one would need 10!

Sorry, but I managed all scenarios before in good order, levelled my troops, got archmage, 2 white mages, 3 paladins, 2 elf heroes, 2 druids, and several other units short before levelup - and then THIS scenario - sorry, but it was designed to utterly break my whole army and make me loose all my units!
NO fun at all!
I tried ALL strategies - staying at the keep, complete nonesense, it does not even have enough space for my army, and everyone unit outside gets slaugthered right away the undead arrive. Moving to the west-lake, not making any sense, as the undead have flying units, aporaching over the water, no bottleneck at all.
anyway, the undead ALWAYS attack with weapons I cannot defend, or even attack them, at night the whole things is a slaughter, and i do not even make it until daylight of day 2, my army and/or one of my main chars gets killed until turn 7
Marching south to kill the lich (for what reason, what would that help? there is not major re-supply from them) my army gets heavy wounded by those undead and the other 2 army approach and clean me up

right now, this scenario
I'd recommend watching some of the replays uploaded here, there are many here that managed to beat this scenario, some also defeated one or more enemy leader(s). It's been quite a while since I've played this scenario, but I can assure you, it's beatable.
gnombat
Posts: 682
Joined: June 10th, 2010, 8:49 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by gnombat »

geronimo23 wrote: April 4th, 2023, 1:26 pm I tried ALL strategies - staying at the keep, complete nonesense, it does not even have enough space for my army, and everyone unit outside gets slaugthered right away the undead arrive.
Yes, this strategy sounds pretty hopeless - you're surrounded and you'll be attacked from three directions at once.
geronimo23 wrote: April 4th, 2023, 1:26 pm Moving to the west-lake, not making any sense, as the undead have flying units, aporaching over the water, no bottleneck at all.
Yes, this strategy also seems futile.
geronimo23 wrote: April 4th, 2023, 1:26 pm Marching south to kill the lich (for what reason, what would that help? there is not major re-supply from them) my army gets heavy wounded by those undead and the other 2 army approach and clean me up
This is the strategy you want to use. It's still going to be a brutal battle but it is better to fight one enemy first (and eliminate it) and then the other two, rather than trying to fight all three at once. Expect to take some losses, though.
geronimo23
Posts: 3
Joined: April 4th, 2023, 1:15 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by geronimo23 »

Problem ist, that my units get wounded so heavily by the chocobones and other, and I loose at least 1, maybe 2, that I have no chance for 2nd and 3rd army
geronimo23
Posts: 3
Joined: April 4th, 2023, 1:15 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by geronimo23 »

even worse, this scenario was so frustrating, I started cheating, and now the whole game is somehow dull & wasted...

fact is, that I cannot stand the thing, that no matter how good and experienced my troops have become, there are always losses in senior rank - by sudden overwhelming AI units, who just kill in a single blow - and there is not a single chance to replace an old experienced unit, as new/young units immediately get bitten away by the same strong AI units

this is somehow very very frustrating as well
gnombat
Posts: 682
Joined: June 10th, 2010, 8:49 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by gnombat »

geronimo23 wrote: April 6th, 2023, 1:04 pm Problem ist, that my units get wounded so heavily by the chocobones and other, and I loose at least 1, maybe 2, that I have no chance for 2nd and 3rd army
To be honest, I would generally expect to lose more than that in the initial battle with the first enemy. It's not the sort of battle you can expect to get through without losses.
geronimo23 wrote: April 6th, 2023, 1:08 pm fact is, that I cannot stand the thing, that no matter how good and experienced my troops have become, there are always losses in senior rank - by sudden overwhelming AI units, who just kill in a single blow - and there is not a single chance to replace an old experienced unit, as new/young units immediately get bitten away by the same strong AI units
The thing you have to keep in mind when playing Battle for Wesnoth is that it is not the sort of game where the objective is to keep all units alive at all times. If that's the sort of game you're looking for, well ... you're probably not going to like Wesnoth very much. In this game you generally expect to take a lot of losses during the course of a campaign, sometimes even losses of high-level experienced units. Generally, as a strategy you want to aim to recruit a number of fresh units in pretty much every scenario; some of them will probably die, but the ones that survive will gain experience so they will eventually be able to replace your higher-level losses.
LienRag
Posts: 127
Joined: September 24th, 2018, 4:03 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by LienRag »

It's a a brutal scenario, but certainly not an impossible one.
It makes one has to think strategically rather than just use usual tactics, so it can be frustrating at first but no, it's not a "not fun at all" scenario.
Orek
Posts: 27
Joined: June 24th, 2020, 1:02 am

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by Orek »

Content Feedback wrote: (1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
(1) Challenging (=Champion=Hardest) in 1.14.17 on permadeath
(2) 8 (5th most difficult = 19th easiest)
... [Difficult] 2, 16, 14, 4, 9, 6, 5b, 10, 13, 12, 23, 8, 7, 3, 15, 17, 19c, 22, 1, 20b, 11, 24, 18 [Easy]
(3) "Eradicate all the liches" would be clearer although the current one should also make sense.
(4) Clear and interesting enough
(5) Consistently surviving the 2nd night was very difficult. Therefore, I killed all 3 Liches not for bragging but for safety.
(6) 9 (4th most fun = 20th most boring)
... [Fun] 2, 1, 6, 9, 5b, 4, 16, 15, 23, 3, 12, 14, 10, 24, 13, 8, 7, 19c, 20b, 11, 17, 22, 18 [Boring]
(7) None

YouTube Link: Run 1 Run 2 Run 3
Walkthrough: HttT walkthrough (hardest, permadeath, v1.14.17) + General campaign guides (Replays for all scenarios can be downloaded from here.)
HenryY2020
Posts: 21
Joined: February 4th, 2020, 7:24 am

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by HenryY2020 »

After seeing geronimo23's available units, I think he/she can easily beat this scenario. In order to win, he/she can do the following:

1. Pick up the holy water bottles with 1 paladin each.

2. Use the paladins with the holy water bottles to assassinate the north and east liches.

3. Recall veterans who do well against undead and use the remaining gold to recruit elvish shamans.

4. Use the elvish shamans to slow down the chocobones.

5. After the chocobones are dealt with, use the veterans to finish off the southwest lich and his forces.
Corellon
Posts: 1
Joined: August 8th, 2023, 2:15 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by Corellon »

Hello.
I am sorry for geronimo23, but this scenario is hard, but not impossible: I succeeded several times to finish the campaign without any dead unit, on medium difficulty. And, for once, I even destroyed the 3 liches (the North liche is the one I usually can't destroy).

(1) Medium difficulty on 1.14.9
(2) 9 or 10, it is difficult to survive, hard to save all units (you need to have levelled a lot of them + careful strategy), very hard to win (tight timing = counter-attack at round 6)
(3) Clear enough
(4) OK
(5) The chocobone (I never had more than one) is easy to kill (it goes out of reach from the rest of its group, and cannot resist Delfador or 2 mages), the wraiths are very easy to kill (their first attack has to be taken by high HP units), most of the walking corpses can be killed before their attack, the revenants and bone shooters just require a good strategy. After all, the only problem is the timing, and to get a counter-attack soon enough (while placing the units as far North and East as possible).
(6) As a challenging scenario, I scale it at 10
(7) An additional turn would make the scenario much easier (but is it wanted?)
otzenpunk
Posts: 104
Joined: February 11th, 2018, 5:32 pm
Location: Hamburg / Germany

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by otzenpunk »

geronimo23 wrote: April 4th, 2023, 1:26 pm Marching south to kill the lich (for what reason, what would that help? there is not major re-supply from them) my army gets heavy wounded by those undead and the other 2 army approach and clean me up
geronimo23 wrote: April 6th, 2023, 1:08 pm fact is, that I cannot stand the thing, that no matter how good and experienced my troops have become, there are always losses in senior rank - by sudden overwhelming AI units, who just kill in a single blow - and there is not a single chance to replace an old experienced unit, as new/young units immediately get bitten away by the same strong AI units
As others already have pointed out, this scenario is definitely not unbeatable, especially on 'novice'. The reason, while marching south is the right thing, is not that you're gonna get any resources from killing the lich, but instead you gain time. Making a stand at the centre of the map against all three undead armies at once is in fact not really winnable, but dividing the enemy and beating one army after the other is.

Also really important in this scenario is, that you provide the opponent – especially units like the chocobone – with opportunities to kill some cannon fodder. You need quite a couple of lvl1 fighters here, that you can place in the first line to take a beating. After they hopefully dealt some retaliation damage, the wizards get in and finish them off, and then again you're going to move the surviving lvl1s and/or heavy tanks to the front into the freed up space.

It's also quite useful, if you can spare them, to send some expendable lvl1s to the little forest right to the northeast of your keep, to distract green team and buy you even more time.

And finally, your selection of level-ups is unfortunately not as optimal as it could be. 3 paladins are imho just too much. They are very specialized units to target undead units like the archer and adept line, but they are kinda squishy and not much of use as a road block or against the majority of melee units, and a grand knight (or even elvish rider) would have profited much more from a holy water bottle. Also I would have levelled at least one of the druids into a sorcerer instead, and made elvish captains instead of heroes to support the front line fodder with leadership where possible.

Here's my last run on medium (1.14):
Attachments
HttT-The Valley of Death — The Princess’s Revenge replay.gz
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JL42
Posts: 66
Joined: December 9th, 2023, 11:19 am

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by JL42 »

What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
v. 1.16.10
Lord / Challenging
How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
7 – This is a tricky scenario because the difficulty hinges on finding the right strategy, which is kind of non-intuitive. All indications are that you should hunker down and defend your castle, which might be possible but is super-hard, and once you get surrounded then it turns into a slaughter (of you). There are several alternative approaches that will let you fight one enemy at a time, ideally in the daylight, and not take a lot of losses. Which makes it a really fascinating map. Coming into it with a lot of gold is obviously helpful. All in all, I found this one to be very doable – after a couple of experiments and attempts – and to me it was significantly easier than the previous Siege of Elensefar scenario (which I think should be toned down).
How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Very clear.
How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Very clear; moderately interesting.
What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Figuring out how to not get slaughtered by the undead.
How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
6
What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
I really like the complex challenge presented by this map, and would not make any changes to those aspects. The only thing that bugged me is how the ending was kind of weird and abrupt. We were right in the middle of smashing the second undead army (while some sacrificial units distracted army #3), when Kalenz just suddenly announces "I feel like we survived" and it ends. What a letdown! Maybe if the enemies just turned around and fled or vanished or something ("They are retreating!") then that would make more sense.

I do think it might be useful to have some more detailed advice at the beginning of this scenario, which is in keeping with the way the player has been previously mentored in Heir to the Throne. Instead of just saying "let us try to survive!" Kalenz might say, "We have several options here ...."

---------------
About the Overall Campaign:

The maps and storyline here are well-made and polished, though not as completely epic as some of the other campaigns. I like that it is lengthy, giving you time to develop your army, and gradually introduces many different terrains and unit types. This seems like a great beginner campaign since it's fairly easy and the early scenarios are framed as a kind of mentoring environment for the young hero. (However, it's a bit strange that some of the basic dialogue tips, like "hey, loyal units don't require upkeep!" are just now arriving, after I've already played through several previous campaigns without that advice.) There are some glitches that can come up in the Scepter of Fire scenario, and some of the princess-related dialogue around scenarios 17–21 felt a bit confusing and unbelievable (more specific comments in the relevant threads). This campaign is very close to full marks, but due to those few lingering issues and the lack of any real epic blow-you-away maps I'm going to rate it 4 out of 5.
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holypaladin
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Location: Poland

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by holypaladin »

This I think is messing a lot in plot (as well as "Test of the Clans") for making a bad person from Li'sar who was named before as "most noble of her mother's commanders", I think campaning would look better without this.
„Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam"
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