Descent into Darkness revised

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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nemaara
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by nemaara »

white_haired_uncle wrote: February 23rd, 2019, 5:27 pm Played on easy. There were a couple of early levels with orcs that I'd like to see their income taken down a bit. They just kept recruiting at least as fast as I could kill them, so of course as soon as I had a turn or two of bad luck it was all over.

It seems to me that this is a campaign where if you fall behind in one scenario you're pretty much going to be playing from behind the whole way with little to no chance to recover. I can't quantify that, it's just a feeling that I got towards the end.
I adjusted enemy income levels down a little bit for the scenarios I've merged so far (S1-5, like maybe reducing enemy gold by 5-10 or 10-20 on easy/normal difficulties, and reducing income by 1-2). I'm hesitant to reduce it more than that since it might end up being tooooo easy, but I might look at adjusting the gold a little more if other people are having trouble. Perhaps you could provide some replays as well? It might help me see how you're playing it. ^_^
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max_torch
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by max_torch »

nemaara wrote: February 8th, 2019, 3:45 am A working version of the revised campaign is now on the add-on server. You can get it from there if you want to playtest. :0
Have the revisions in this add-on already been merged to mainline? Because if yes I'll format the dialog as a script for voice over.
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nemaara
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by nemaara »

Yes, but don't use the addon to make the script. Use what's on the master branch in the github repository; that's the most up to date.
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max_torch
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by max_torch »

@nemaara
That's exactly what I wanted to clarify. Thanks.
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The_Gnat
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by The_Gnat »

max_torch wrote: April 21st, 2019, 6:58 am Have the revisions in this add-on already been merged to mainline? Because if yes I'll format the dialog as a script for voice over.
Hello max_torch! Yes that would be great! :) I don't know what exactly happened to the rest of the team working though ^_^ RL does really take up a lot of life.
we11esly
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by we11esly »

huge fan of this campaign, and I'm very please with the improvements. Much deeper as an experience.

In the level DiD, am I missing some sidequest with the diadem? After I picked it up I searched forever for the payoff, but never found anything.

Also do I understand correctly the Lich Book is from another campaign? If so, great tie-in.
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josteph
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by josteph »

Thanks for the feedback.

Which diadem? Where is it located?

The book is from Secrets of the Ancients.
we11esly
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by we11esly »

pardon me, it was a 'brazier.' @21.18

After a lot lot lot of poking about, I did manage to do some shenanigans with a corpse in the upper northwest corner, but I can't seem to finish the experiment being hinted at. When you wake the dragon the points (vial @15.22, altar @6.15) stop being triggers.

It's a super cool thing to explore but I can't work out what to do!
we11esly
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by we11esly »

okay I've just done the equivalent of a being sent to get something from the kitchen, swearing it's not there, and then someone walks in and it's sitting in plain view on the table.

Gave it another whirl just now and it's quite obvious what to do. LOVED the hints from the book to complete the ritual, really wish I had picked up on it the first playthrough.

I think I got lucky with the RNG and then wandered up towards the villages, healing there and skipping straight to usurping the dragon. However, I wouldn't say I was upset about it because skulking around in caves for an eternity, biding my strength, is a very lich thing to do.
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josteph
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by josteph »

I'm glad you enjoyed it! :D
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SpiderAja
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by SpiderAja »

Dayum, that was an awesome replay >w<
Descent into Darkness always was one of my favorite campaigns because Mal Keshar is so damn cool in Invasion from the Unknown and After the Storm XD
(He also appears in Legend of the Invincibles, but that's too short an appearance to advertise his awesomeness)

Descent into Darkness also is the reason I always have a spectre in my undead armies >:3

Anyways... story relevant stuff...
I played on medium and came through it relatively easy (I guess even I pick up some sense for strategy after a while :P)
The changes right at the beginning were quite nice. I held the fort without raising walking corpses and while originally the sister was injured (despite her appearing later to hunt you down) and Malin would leave in search for revenge, this time the sister was actually around and tried to talk Malin out of his plans before he left the village
The cave level was awesome in my opinion, far easier than it was to fight the dwarves in the prior version and the lore and necromancy lessons were a good read >w< I also liked that the rebellious spirit, which could cause quite some trouble in the dwarf cave, wasn't 20 wasted gold this time and did not steal half my army :P
As in my plays before I struggled quite a bit with Darken Volk, but some patience and he and the paladins worn down each other

At first I failed the first step of the ritual and had to restart after killing all undead without anything happening, then I tried to injure myself on purpose fighting the undead and the bosses spawned
The puzzles to boost Mal Keshar's attacks were quite fun and the fight against the dragon was so damn hard because I was far too attached to my spectres to have them die, in the end I spammed ghouls and walking corpses from a rune and eventually the dragon was weakened by poison and other things enough that the spectres and Mal Keshar could take it down
And then came my favorite scenario, The endless Night <3 I reached the third scenario, tried the "good end" with the book and I loved it, a battle to the death has quite its charm, but having an option besides defeat to win the campaign is quite nice >w<

then I reloaded the third endless night and tested how long I can last
After fighting off orks, bandits, humans, elves, who had the best units since their sorceresses can beat spectres in a single round, I reached the fifth wave, bandits+humans, and found out that from now on two foolish heroes get thrown at me... Well, I lost half my veterans to them, but pushed them back and then in the sixth wave, humans+orks, I threw my remaining veterans at the human hero in the north while having two soulless and one walking corpse be bait to lead an enemy unit to the book
When I had almost finished the humans an orkish assassin stepped on the book and I had reached the end again

Funnily enough every time I played this campaign so far the orks were the ones to bring an end to the campaign XD

Oh, the skeleton dragon was freaking amazing
I raised it up to over 130 health, so damn tanky d(OwO

...
short version: I love the campaign even more now then I used to do before it was revised <3
mthree
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by mthree »

Hi Guys,

So I'm in this scenario now, in what I think appears to be caves...

The first part with the runes and the Gould, I can go through no problems .
Then, the ones with the skeletons, I'm not sure what to do.
I've tried letting myself killed. Killing all the skeletons....scouting every single corner of the map. But I can't seem to complete this. I'm up turn 70...

May I have a hint please? :-)

I play on the Android version.
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josteph
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by josteph »

I assume you're talking about scenario 11, Descent into Darkness (yes, same name as the campaign).

In the first part of that scenario,
Spoiler:
In the second part of the scenario,
Spoiler:
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BTIsaac
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by BTIsaac »

josteph wrote: September 9th, 2019, 2:24 am In the second part of the scenario,
Spoiler:
I only found two of them and i swear i explored the entire map
Spoiler:
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josteph
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Re: Descent into Darkness revised

Post by josteph »

BTIsaac wrote: September 9th, 2019, 4:10 am I only found two of them and i swear i explored the entire map
Spoiler:
Hmm. I just checked the current scenario source and there's only two of them. Either my memory is bad or things have changed since I playtested the revision. Sorry. Anyway,
Spoiler:
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