Northern Rebirth

[bert1]

I cant get past the second level either!

There's a replay here of one way to do it:

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 844#256844

It'll still need a certain amount of save-reloading, especially if you do it on the hardest level.

[Iris]

Man, I hte playing as outlaws. Theyre weak.

u pr0v0k3 HODOR w1th ur w0rd5.

ROFL. I was waiting for this.

[Dragonchampion]

What does it mean?

[ShikadiQueen]

It means that he r0xx0rz, you suxx0rz.

It's BIG LIZARD. He pwnz. That's all ya need'a know.

[Dragonchampion]

LOL, Nice cat, by the way.

[Bikerbob]

I posted in the other thread stuck in the caves as well.

I am in 1.3.9 now.. if anyone has a replay I could watch would be great.

I cannot even get past this on the easiest level, and I have done well on most other campaigns.. (at medium)

Thanks

James

[tchoka-woka]

I found a glorious way to topple the wretched fortress. Tallin rushed straight to it with all his friends, zapped the nearest leader, took over his keep, and then recruited brave veterans on the hexes adjacent to the unsuspecting enemy leaders. Some didn't return, but they are heartily remembered as we count our early finish bonuses.

[Sorrow]

Man, I hte playing as outlaws. Theyre weak.

u pr0v0k3 HODOR w1th ur w0rd5.

What does it mean?

HODOR is mighty!

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17442

[santi]

I've beaten this on hard, both on 1.2 and 1.3, the main point is you have lots of gold and lots of peasants. So do your damage, retreat and heal until you manage to level at least a few. You will take damages and you will lose units- just try to pick fights with few isolated enemy units, while letting them initially fight it out. Grab as many villages as you can

[Blasted]

I've beaten this on Normal, on 1.2.8. Quite hard, but doable. I've finished with 3 lvl 1 archers, 2 lvl 2 longbowman and Talin as a lvl 1 spearmen.

What I do:
- Keep spaming peasants;
- Ranged attacks are the king on this level. Best to deal just 3-5 dmg but keep your peasant alive a little longer;
- Above said, always upgrade to archer;
- Let them kill each other while you get to 30+ income. Go for the NE and SW villages and defend them;
- Don't leave peasants alone;

When you get to 30 income (and usually one or two archers, on the SW corner), wait for the day and hit blue's castle. Keep a defense line on the NE, or green will flank you. Just some peasants in the villages and around them should do the trick.
As soon as you kill blue, move Talin to the castle and re-start spamming peasants. You should now be able to get all the villages on the south, giving you 40+ income, which means 5-6 new peasants per turn, non-stop. From there, just send horde after horde of peasants to green. Save your leveled units from dieing and give them the kills, you shall be able to get some L2 stuff. Green will have low income if you did it right while killing blue, so it shall be quite easy.

[King_Douche]

My good lord. The second level is ball-crushingly hard.

But I can't stop playing.

I have a problem.

[Blasted]

The 2nd level is quite a pain until you get the hang of it. After you do, it's cruising. Hint: forget thugs and poachers. Pads are the guys to go. Why? Because they have both ranged and melee, and because they have high defense rates on caves(you can usually stay on 60%-70% terrains, which makes Pads quite hard to kill for a lvl 1 unit)

Here's on I did it, on hard. Divide the map in 3 fronts(tunnels): North, South and East.
Recruit all Pads you can, for 2-3 turns. Priorities: 4-5 Pads to North, 4 to South, ~10 East.

North:
Run through the tunnel until the Mage house. Start defending from there, use the village on the back to heal. Use the Mage safely, and advance towards the Troll Leader, but don't rush it. Avoid losing Pads; you want to level them up. If you feel that your village isn't healing fast enough, recruit 1 or 2 more pads to help in rotating. Try to be at the leader around turn 20-25.

South:
Here it is quite straightforward. Just sit 2 guys in the 1st fort and beside it, and have 2-3 replacements at the back. When the front guys get hit, swap and heal in a village. Wash and repeat until you win. You don't need to advance in the tunnels, just keep them contained. By the end of the map, you should have all these Pads on lvl 2, maybe even 1 on lvl 3.

East:
Here, its kind of the same on South. After the 3 villages, there is a line of 5 tiles that are good defense, and they face 4 tiles that are bad defense. Build your front line there, and do the same you do on South. You will level a lot of your units here, to lvl 2 and lvl 3. Stay on this place and let trolls and undead kill each other. After a few turns, you will notice that they will kind of give up suiciding on you - which is a pity.


You could stay on these 3 positions until the end of the round, if you wanted to. Now, let's care about winning, and the key is the Mage. I prefer to use it in the North. Use it to help the North line to advance - but don't rush, stay tight, pay always attention to terrain - and kill the blue troll.
Once the Troll is dead, get all the villages to fix your income. There is a secret path on one of the villages, that will make way to the white undeads castle. It shouldn't be hard to blast your way through. After you do, send some units to the NW to get more villages. Regroup and reorganize the rest; It's time to conquer that center. This depends on how your game developped: some times the trolls kicked white's ass and you will have to face them, other times the trolls are already quite dead(easier for you), but the idea is the same: blast the middle from East and North at same time. Build a defense line in the castle to avoid Trolls if they are still alive, and move down with a few strong units to keep the orange undeads inside their tunnel. Bring your hero towards the middle castle too, and recruit a group or two of Pads if you need some fodder to hold the center. Once troll leader is dead, send some fodder to catch his villages, and send your stronger units on the tunnel down the Troll castle. You must keep an eye on the turns, the path is quite long. You need ~10-12 turns to reach the keep with the Hero, starting from the center castle. There's another skeleton leader down there, but it should be no problem for your level 3 Fugitives and your mage.
Done

Sadly, so far this has been the hardest map of the campaign. Maybe because using this tactic on the 2nd map, I end up starting 3rd map with 7 Fugitives (and even more, on later levels). The walkthrough is a bit deceiving, since it keeps telling me to get dwarves, but I found that using a horde Fugitives is extremely effective on all the levels I played so far. Better than dwarves, for sure. Faster, more versatile and usually better for defense.

[Angry Andersen]

I played this campaign on 1.2.7. In that version footpads are not available, so poachers are the unit of choice against the trolls on lvl2, while you need thugs against the skeletons. On later levels I relied heavily on Dwarves, as they are much better against skeletons than thugs or poachers.

It seems this has changed quite a bit, but I still doubt that a fugitive is a match for a Dwarven Lord when fighting Northerners in hills & mountains (something encountered fairly often later on).

BTW I managed to get past the southern chokepoint in lvl2, giving me access to lots of the troll's villages. You have (had) to press hard to get there, but if you manage to get through it really pays off!

[Blasted]

Well, in caves vs undead fugitives work quite better than the lords, but the lords themselves are quite good too. What I'm doing now is leveling some dwarves, since I already have too many Fugitives. You can always get your dwarf lords later 4 or 5 can be made out of nothing just in the 8-paths level, without much effort.

I worried less for green trolls on the 2nd level because that wasn't the objective, and I didn't feel the need for money anyway (I get enough for the next level while waiting for Tallin to reach the dwarves). If you want to, it can be done easily, just move the Mage to the south line when you get him, or force slowly - like in the blue troll line.

[bert1]

I cant get past the second level either!

There's a replay here of one way to do it:

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 844#256844

It'll still need a certain amount of save-reloading, especially if you do it on the hardest level.

I'm pleased to say that I have just completed this level on nightmare with just three reloads: (version 1.3.11)

Once at the autosave of turn 14 (The ai just got very lucky and wiped out lots of units.)
Once at the autosave of turn 38 (So I could re-route the mage in order to get to the green troll leader by turn 45)
Once at the autosave of turn 45 (I needed a second attempt at killing the last leader.)

Unfortunately the replay is corrupt! So you'll have to take my word. I basically use the same strategy as in the replay I posted before.

So this level should be possible to do with no reloads even on the hardest level!

EDIT: Blasted's advice is good. Only thing I would add is send a group of 4-6 quick footpads through to the top right corner and hole up in a nice defensible corner with lots of villages.