Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

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monokli
Posts: 31
Joined: November 13th, 2011, 4:56 am
Location: Southern Quadrant/unknown

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by monokli »

Here comes the second attempt with an early finish bonus: Haldiel goes nw, picks up water, Elvish rider goes se, for water. Haldiel then distracts the northern force by going in to capture villages and look threatening, while staying juust out of the ghosts' range, causing some to arrive a little later. Full castle rush with 2 white mages, some outlaws, elves and heroes crushes green eastern lich in the first few turns. Konrad recruits a mage, recalls a footpad and I forgot that I left Loflar in the old castle's eastern village. My elves (sorc, druid, avenger, later loflar) consolidate to the trees, Delfador goes to the northern hills and the rest of my forces go to the southern hills and grab that village. Haldiel is now in position to assassinate the northern lich.

I just had enough firepower to annihilate the southern front, while my elves and delfador dealt with the northern undead who were far too strung out for their own good. Haldiel assassinated the northern lich in two turns (first forcing a flight then finishing it)

Then with some luck I retreated my knight, and casually killed the last leader in turn 11/12

6: fun10
fredbobsmith2
Posts: 50
Joined: October 23rd, 2010, 1:57 am

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by fredbobsmith2 »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.8.6, Normal

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
8. On older versions the eastern lich only recruited walking corpses, which was okay, but now he recruits wraiths, which makes it that much worse.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Could mention more about the holy water; otherwise normal

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Wraiths coming at me from every direction; they eat elves with their arcane attack. I really preferred just walking corpses from the east, since it was easy to avoid them. This is one of the scenarios that had me question why HttT is labelled a novice campaign.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
3. Chocobones make it hard to keep good troops alive without spending too much gold on sacrificial shields, and again, the wraiths.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
No wraiths from the eastern and southern liches and less from the northern one.
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taptap
Posts: 980
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Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by taptap »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

1.9.11. Challenging, 331 gold

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

9 - tough indeed. More wraiths than on medium :)

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

Clear enough.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

Well. Doesn't make much sense. Why I am here? Why did I trust Lisar? Why do the undead leave? Especially the "phew" doesn't make sense, after killing all undead but the liches who were just too far away to reach in time.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

The strategy that works best for me is going east directly. (When I played it on medium I had enough gold for a second army for delaying action, not so this time. The number of wraiths feels significantly higher too.) Since my army was heavy on spellcasters. 3 white mages, sorceress, druid, arch mage, delfador, I was at times a little short on not-chain-suicide-suitable-tanks and timing between dispatching the eastern lich and the (despite slowing with some units in the forest) arriving armies of the other two was a pretty close, horseman and knight with the holy water took part in the main battle. Killed all units by turn 9/10, didn't kill the other liches. 2 restarts from turn 1 though. (On medium I finished in the first try.)

Special challenge: chain suicide, keeping loyals and critical units alive, having to fight during the first night (most of my improvement in the last month was by proper retreating and using ToD, which isn't really doable with this strategy.)

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

8

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

Add more forest :) Improve dialog.
I am a Saurian Skirmisher: I'm a real pest, especially at night.
Gnashy
Posts: 1
Joined: January 24th, 2012, 9:30 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by Gnashy »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

Latest stable release (1.8.x). I started playing Wesnoth for the first time on 1/22/11. I'm currently playing Heir to the Throne on Normal.

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

The first time I played it, I would have said 10. After contemplating the map and the enemy movements and succeeding on the 8th turn on the second play through, I would say 3.


(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

Clear and concise.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

It fits in with the other missions as far as I can see (I just got to mission 14).

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

The first time I played it it was very frustrating. I tried to split my core units into three forces; disaster came a few turns after when the Eastern Lich King decimated my units with Wraiths. I couldn't see a feasible way to conquer the enemy forces ( I always go for the early victories and bonuses)...and it seemed that any sort of prolonged combat would cost me some of my core units, which was unacceptable. I went to to the forum and read some of the replies in this thread and then tried a different strategy.

I had one Grand Knight and two Paladins. It was fortuitous that I went the Paladin route, as I prefer the ability to heal over time versus the extra damage the Grand Knights get. I used recall on all three and then filled the remainder of my slots with recruited elvish warriors. I sent my Grand Knight northwest for the Holy Water ( to add arcane damage to his sword). The two paladins were sent south down the road and under the mountain range to the east ( the route to the southeastern Holy Water, which I did not use.)

I used my elvish warriors to screen off attacks with Zone of Control from the Eastern and Western forces while I moved Delfador, Konrad and Halzen East and then South. My Knight and Paladins were placed just outside of the Lich Kings ranges around turn 6; I had to wait until Turn 8 to receive their L:awful bonuses, and then I attacked each Lich King in succession.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

4. Too many wraiths from the East and it seems obvious that people new to the game or the scenario might not have the proper units to win or, even worse, might needlessly sacrifice their core units. I was forced to reload my round 8 several times to achieve the victory, which was also disappointing, but it seemed the lesser of two evils when compared to the time and frustration I would spend playing the mission over and over again in the hope that the rolls on the last battle would go my way. The next time I play this mission, I will use the same strategy, but will send Kalenz, Delfador and Konrad with each of the Knight's/Paladins. As all three were surrounded by wraiths on Turn 8, I didn't have the option of playing through turns 9 or 10 to see if the rolls would go my way.


(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

It should be balanced more to take into account enemy forces and potential of a player's standing forces. I always make an effort to lose as few forces as possible in any turn based strategy or tactical game. While the devs have stressed the point that sometimes you will have to sacrifice units (especially core units) to win (which, of course, is a strategy that is as old as Chess and warfare), I gained very little satisfaction from sacrificing my entire force of recruits as the only viable option to keeping my core units from being slaughtered.
Cavalary
Posts: 1
Joined: February 8th, 2012, 4:12 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by Cavalary »

Made the account just to post this now...

Just downloaded the game after 1.10 came out, finished the other 3 novice campaigns and the first intermediate one, since they were all shorter, and then said to have a go at Heir to the Throne... And it went reasonably well (though there keep being hard moments) until this scenario... So let's see, about those questions...

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

- Normal, 1.10.0

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

- 9, because I was eventually able to finish it, so can't say 10.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

- Very. No problem there.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

- Fits well enough, though the holy water should have been mentioned in the beginning, to cut the number of restarts by one.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

- What weren't? Survival for 12 turns is out of the question, so the only chance is to kill the liches, forming a living shield out of every unit you have to keep your leaders alive until that happens. And sacrificing units like that is something I really loathe to do and will usually avoid it at all costs. I gave up on quite a few strategy games before because they required too many units to be sacrificed to have a chance.
It took many, many restarts before I could make it work (by sacrificing all I could recruit and have, unfortunately), and then several reloads of the final turn because my grand knights wouldn't hit the liches and there was no way I could survive for one more turn to try again (so each of them needed to hit once out of 4 attacks at 40% chance to hit, and I needed to reload some 5 times before that happened!). I try not to do this, reload turns repeatedly to look for a favorable roll, but there was no way I was going to restart this yet again, so it was the only way. Was about to just give up on the game otherwise...
This is the kind of scenario that, if you don't happen to start with the right kind of units (and loads of them), is only fitting for the very end of a campaign, too hard and too much of a slaughterfest to be earlier. You're left starting basically from scratch in the next one...

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

- 1. (Can I say 0?) No fun in this whatsoever. Period.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

- Perhaps separate what each lich can call, with a couple of closely related unit types for each. And possibly also replace spectres with ghosts, or at least limit the number the liches can call (if possible), so there won't be more than a few on the map, considering how devastating they can be in numbers.
Also, add more forested areas, and likely also a river or a wider moat, to allow you to use the army of mermen you have with you, as they can't do much in that moat that is around your starting keep.

Added the replay for it, with killing the liches on turn 8...
Attachments
HttT-The_Valley_of_Death_—_..._replay.gz
Here's the replay.
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CeltiK
Posts: 27
Joined: April 24th, 2011, 9:14 am

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by CeltiK »

I think the difficulty of this scenario is directly linked to whether or not you went to the isle of the damned. When I used to play HttT, I always went to the isle and as a result I had lots of lv2 outlaws and bandits, making this scenario much easier. If you don't have these units, just rush to the SW lich and take its place on the mountains.
djizousse
Posts: 1
Joined: March 1st, 2012, 10:26 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by djizousse »

Just like Cavalary (even if it's not the same version of the game), i just started the game and enjoyed it, until this this map at least.

1/ Normal, 1.8
2/ 10
3/ clear
4/ Pretty clear, except for the holly water : you should mention if it affects only the one who pick it up or everyone (i know it wouldn't make sense, but it's only a game and i wondered what would it be until i went on the forum)
5/ Survive, and keep the main characters alive (is this really a novice campaign?)
6/ 1
7/ Three dinstincts types of armies.

Thanks for the work, though.
dedalus
Posts: 4
Joined: December 18th, 2011, 12:50 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by dedalus »

I think I have a problem with this scenario.


Unless I am doing anything wrong, the holy water does not have any effect, I cannot see any magic attack nunder my unit's capabilities, nor does it make more damage with its melee attacks.

And yes, I do click on "the pick it up" button :(
alluton
Posts: 420
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Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by alluton »

It changes attack type of the units melee to arcane type.
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dedalus
Posts: 4
Joined: December 18th, 2011, 12:50 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by dedalus »

alluton wrote:It changes attack type of the units melee to arcane type.
I checked, and the attack type remains melee, not arcane.

I tried upgrading to the latest version of wesnoth (i was using 1.8 sorry I forgot to mention that) but to no avail.
gripsbw
Posts: 1
Joined: March 10th, 2012, 7:33 pm

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by gripsbw »

Finally made it after three fails and then reading through this forum which helped a lot. Now some feedback from me.
(1) Wesnoth 1.8 on Normal
(2) 9 - It was the most difficult scenario for me in this campaign so far.
(3) 8 - Pretty clear. But to some extend misleading (which makes it interesting from a tactical point of view) because survival in defense without fighting the Lichs seems impossible.
(4) 9 - The holy water adds a new interesting feature to this scenario.
(5) Keeping my leaders and level 2 and 3 units alive because of the massive number of opponent units. The wraiths were most difficult for me to handle because they are fast, many, surround my troops and deal heavy damage. Realizing after three fails in a row that going with my major forces towards the East Lich was no good idea (or I was no good enough player). Reading through this forum helped me to understand alternative solutions. Moving major force against the South Lich worked better because it puts more distance between your troops and the units coming from the East and North Lich.
(6) 7 - My first tries were quite frustrating. But killing all 3 Lichs within one round (8/12) is fun :D
(7) To avoid the frustration maybe some more hints could be included in the dialogue, e.g. to not stay sitting in the castle or how to lure away the wraiths from the main troops.

Following the recommendations of others in this forum (thanks) I first recruited a couple of expandable troops (sorry to say that, little heroes), 6 elvish fighters + 1 shaman which were sent to the forest North-East from my castle. They did a perfect task just sitting there in a defense position and attracting lots of troops from the East and North Lich. I also formed two assassination teams of a knight + horseman for each of the N and E Lich. These teams started towards NW and SE resp. with the knight taking the holy water on their way to the Lichs (circumventing all other enemy troops). In round 7 the horsemen arriving at the Lichs lured them out of their castles which made it then easier to fight them. In between my major force (incl. all leaders, some stronger L2-3 units, healers and mages) moved to the south to go for the S Lich. Good timing was essential, making progress in the south before the enemies from the north and east reach me. Morning of the second day on round 8/12 was the perfect time to kill all three Lichs. My forest group had survived just long enough to do a good job, the returning enemy troops would have saved the Lichs only one round later. Before giving the final blow to the 3rd Lich (S) the walking corpses and adepts running behind my troops were good for milking some experience points.

Drawbacks: I spent all my gold on my huge army (probably could do with some units less in the south but I wanted to be on the safe side after the previous fails), the early finish bonus is not really much money, and I surprisingly lost one level 3 unit (R.I.P.). I will see in the next scenario whether the shortage of gold will be crucial. You could probably still do better than me, here the replay:
Attachments
DT-Das_Tal_des_Todes_–_Di..._Wiederholung_anzeigen.gz
replay
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Jabie
Posts: 107
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Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by Jabie »

South is better than East, with a slowing force you can hold up East and North long enough for them not to be an option.
Jabie
Posts: 107
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Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by Jabie »

7.

I asked a question on the forums recently as to which was the starting campaign. Although the South Guard was mentioned, a number of responses suggested that Heir to the Throne is the best starting campaign. I certainly concur that HttT is the most polished of all the campaigns and a very good place to dive in. However as a result of that it may be necessary to introduce a few hints and tips in some of the starting scenarios, especially if the player is playing on Easy.

This is probably the best scenario to reinforce the concept of the ZoC lock. ZoC lock, that is using the Zone of Control effect to hamper and an enemies movement are a key tactic, and one that should be suggested. The player is defending and they need to do all they can to keep the enemy at bay. Using cheap units to form interspaced lines or surrounding an enemy so that they cannot move is a key tactical tool for any Wesnoth general and one that will be of immense use here. Be sure to mention that sometimes it is better not to attack so that your unit suffers no damage and thus has more hit points and will require more of an enemies resources to remove. Every unit diverted to your sacrificial lamb is one that isn't wailing on your important troops.
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Danthar
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Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by Danthar »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Wesnoth 1.10.1
Medium

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
9

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Crystal

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Not all that clear. First of all at one point Konrad says 'Wow so many, what are we going to do?' And then the Elf talks about the Holy Water. Now what I thought was that you grab the holy water, bring it back to the city and then it's this very nice weapon buff for everyone as they share it. Well soon found out that it works differently. In the end I decided not to even bother with it. If I were to replay the scenario I probably would, but that's just because I found a way to beat them and have enough time if I can duplicate that to take the detour, which is something I wasn't sure of until now.
It's not a real problem though.
Delfador (the Elder Mage) saying something like 'we should defend' did throw me for a loop though, see below.
I didn't find the dialogue and storyline particularly interesting. I do really like the idea of being lured in an ambush by Li'Sar, but it would be better to more directly convey that message... or something else. Right now the dialogue feels pretty bland, sorry.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
The huge amount of wraiths and bone-archers and the few revenants. Mostly the wraiths and the fact that if you want to finish early you have to split your army three ways.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
5
Because I think it depends. Today I had a blast finishing it with a better version of my initial strategy. But before I chose a strategy the very first time I saw my best options were either go south (slightly favoured it because of the smaller castle size), or go east, and send some knights off to go round the back of the one I didn't chose. However, the Elder Mage said something that we should defend, so I decided to try it that way (you know, RP-ing, etc), which was a slaughter. Then I tried it again thinking that that after all was how the scenario was intended and didn't want to rely on cheap AI-abuse. But that failed again horribly. Just lost too many of my good units and decided to quit. At that point I didn't think it was fun at all.
So then I found this topic and read some things and was pretty happy my initial strategy should work and I shouldn't feel bad not playing it 'correctly' and relying on the AI not recognizing the danger of lancers behind enemy lines.
Ultimately I had only 1 problem: I have played the other scenario's pretty fast (finishing on turn 8 when there's like 28 and such) so I didn't get a lot of units nor levelups.
I only had 1 paladin and 1 lancer. This really made things harder, put I pulled it off on turn 8. Could easily have been turn 7 if I had had one more lancer (or had decided to recruit a horseman I guess). But that was fun, although I did have to reload quite a bit. I just did because I had already spent enough time on it as it was, and once you accept you'll reload it's not that bad. Usually I try to play with 'permadeath' rules though, but for this campaign I made an exception.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
More dialogue about being deceived into an ambush by that princess and a little better dialogue about the water so that you know from the start it's only for the one unit that picks it up. Also not the line about having to defend. Maybe some more 'we're really in trouble now time to give it our all or we'll end here'-speech.
I'd like some sort of dialogue when combat is first joined as well.
It would be cool if the other liches react to one of them being killed.

To really make it more fun? Hard to say without playtesting but maybe I'd make some kind of concealed unit tell Konrad at the start that they'll help by eliminating the leaders, and then if you send a knight or so near the Liche the concealed unit comes out, but in this case the Liche shouldn't just sit there but defend himself a little better.
I'd also kinda clarify that they won't keep summoning, because that was why I initially thought this was impossible, if they would have summoned as much every turn as they did in the beginning. To prevent that I tried taking their villages, but that didn't work too good, and they don't seem to use the money anyway.
Also possible: make it so that players know that when we kill a liche all their troops vanish (magic is gone?).
Also possible: let the Liches disappear and just summon their initial hordes, that way you don't feel threatened anymore and you can try and hold out if that's how you want the ambush to play out.
Attachments
HttT-The_Valley_of_Death_—_..._replay.gz
My replay
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Kaiserdrache
Posts: 32
Joined: November 3rd, 2011, 7:26 am

Re: Scenario 9: The Valley of Death

Post by Kaiserdrache »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

Medium, 1.8

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

7 - one of the harder scenarios

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

Not clear, the "two days" to hold out puzzled me a bit.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

Very clear, but totally boring.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

Deciding on a strategy.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

3, not my taste at all.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

Add some stray fortifications to the terrain, so that some freshly recruited units can slow down the enemy.

************

A really hard one that was. During the scenario I lost four horsemen and a level 3 elvish champion. Although I have to admit that I was a little bit short on mages (5 in total) things were managable. Okay, I had to reload twice to avoid another two heavy losses, but that was it. Running for the southern fortress wasn't the best course of action, the next time I'm going to try something else.
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