14. The Drowned Plains

[Content Feedback]

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions 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?

[JoeGeneric]

1) normal
2) 6
3) very clear
4) dialogue was very good
5) the map is large and the terrain is complex and hard to move over
6) 7
7) I would slightly shrink the map because it is too large to get everywhere quickly, this could be balanced by cutting time limit by a turn or two

[Vendrick]

(1) Invasion, 1.18
(2) 4
(3) Clear
(4) Good character beats and the small dialogue variations with the Undead leaders are a nice touch.
(6) 4
(7) The strengths of the scenario are the writing: the character work, the imagery and atmosphere. I don't think there's even any bad design decisions; it just doesn't cohere into something that's much fun to play.

The bulk of the scenario is shuffling a a pile of units between the Undead keeps while being annoyed by ambushing Undead and your villages get poached by ghosts and random(?) Undead from the swamp.
The worst part of the scenario is when you queue up the moves for your forces to move between keeps and some random Undead strolls across their routes and causes everyone to deviate from their intended paths.

I reckon the most likely way to loose the scenario is through spending too long securing the initial villages and then being forced to take risks or outright loose due to time. It takes quite a while for the player's units to travel to all 3 keeps in succession.
The scenario is so long that having to replay it to correct early mistakes would be miserable.

The AI for the sides with leaders is cowardly enough during the day that they can outright flee into the swamp and leave their leader sitting on the keep.
This also means that 2/3 Undead leaders can be slain on their keeps.

Hahid's crass sales pitch is fun but the elixir really isn't worth 30 gold in this scenario.
Beserk on Owaec is obviously extremely powerful offensively in combination with Shock but:
1) Owaec is essential
2) The scenario's difficulty is low, with wide terrain
3) The experience from kills is better used elsewhere
4) Starting gold (130 on Invasion) is very tight because it has to accomodate a force substantial enough to start killing the Undead leaders, capture villages and some fresh recruits to level

This is a rushed and bad replay in general, but the odd early moves and not doing anything on Turn 3 is to avoid Hahid crashing the replay because of a bugged dialogue event.

[sine_nomine]

Invasion, 1.18.0
First thing was confusion because Dacyn disappeared. Eventually found out that it was because of the plague staff, and fortunately he can drop it on turn 1. Then he levels up to a new class and loses all his exp despite being about to reach AMLA. If you have future knowledge you can plan your level ups around these events but otherwise it's frustrating to lose exp.
As for the scenario, the undead ambushes are a bit annoying, the ghosts stealing villages are a bit annoying, and the undead randomly waking up are a bit annoying. But overall it works better than the old version. I prefer the large number of weak enemies that wake up in groups over finding higher level undead in the swamp. You can use a few strong units to hold villages on their own while you use a couple teams to clear paths through the swamp and reach the other villages. I recruited a bunch of corpses to hold villages and provide vision while avoiding upkeep, idk what I'd do without the plague staff. It might have been useful to have a silver mage here. As for fighting the major enemies I found them fairly weak and annoyingly defensive. Wasn't expecting to need to chase these guys after they woke up. The barrow wight's arcane defense didn't work properly vs the holy amulet but I think that's been fixed.
After grabbing villages I sent most of my army to fight the leader at the bottom right, with a few units still scattered around the map. Then I converged my armies to fight the skeletal dragon. Then I spent several empty turns moving my whole army upward to fight the last leader.
Previously there was no need to wake undead that were outside of your path, but now that they wake up randomly some players may want to clear out more of the swamp. Maybe those players would find this scenario less cumbersome if you could use a command to intentionally reveal/rouse undead in a wider area. Some sort of new magic spell for Dacyn, or a war cry for Owaec.

The following scenario "return to wesnoth" is now dialogue-only so I think it shouldn't create a replay.

[Dalas120]

> First thing was confusion because Dacyn disappeared. Eventually found out that it was because of the plague staff, and fortunately he can drop it on turn 1.
> Then he levels up to a new class and loses all his exp despite being about to reach AMLA.
Should both already be fixed in 1.18.1

Ideally, I think I'd rework this scenario to be tight on turn limit and to only require moving gweddy/dacyn to to the left edge of the map, with undead leaders as optional kills for gold bonuses. Might not happen until 1.20 though; I have a lot on my plate at the moment.

[Traumflug]

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?

Version 1.18.4, Biased RNG (experimental), difficulty Invasion (5x enemies) ( = Hard)

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

6

Looking at replays from version 1.18.0 (see previous posts), it became harder with 1.18.4. Enemies are now quite aggressive and each of the three assaults needs some planning and a solid defense.

(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?

Clear.

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

No serious challenges.

However, I should have used it more for troop training. As other replays show, one CAN end up with substantial positive gold, one just has to fight for villages even more, with more units dedicated for this task.

I also should have tried harder to seize more villages. Still not sure whether one can end up with positive gold on difficulty Hard.

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

4 – While castle attacks are fine, all these annoying Undead in the swamps are too much to be funny. Even more these countless fleeing ghosts.

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

Make the map ~30% smaller. 15 turns just to get from one castle to another, all the time being annoyed by Undead, is too much. If that means one can't level up enough units to kill enemy leaders in the later scenario Weldyn Under Attack: that one is quite a bit oversized as well.

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[fredbobsmith2]

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on? Invsaion (Difficult) 1.18.4
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10) 4
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives? Clear, though perhaps it'd be better to clarify that the player must try to get as much gold as possible for Eleventh Hour
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario? Very good
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario? The dialog and objectives make it hard to figure out an actual strategy for this scenario. My overall strategy was to send a small squad of mainly foot units to fight the leaders, collecting some villages on the way, while the horses and mermen flagged more distant villages. Specifically I had Terraent collect the northeast villages, while Owaec and a horseman collected the west ones. For Owaec's team they didn't actually have much success, as the villages are spread out and constantly get retaken by ghosts, so I'm not sure how much gold actually got generated, but I did get the horseman to a paladin by the end of the scenario. The mermen flagged the central villages without too much difficulty, but also had to cycle back and reflag them several times. The main assault team consisted of Gweddry, Dacyn, Grug, a MoL, an L1 mage (who became an arch mage by the end of the scenario), 2 holy pikes/halbs, and the loyal shadow lord. I also had the survivor red mage from the previous scenario, but prioritized levelling them into a silver mage who could then assist in protecting the far villages. This team collected the villages relatively close to the starting keep, then went to the leaders southeast, southwest, and finally northwest to end the scenario. I also had 1 WC to protect the northeast villages who was quite effective, I think if I had recruited around 2 additional WCs to protect the southwest and northwest villages that might have been less frustrating. But then again, those villages are spaced much further apart. Had ~590g carryover.
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10) 2, ghosts stealing villages is really annoying, especially since they're actually fairly hard to reclaim. Plus, marching troops through days of swamp. Finally, the enemy keep troops tend to flee during the day, but its hard to pin them down since they are surrounded by swamp, so fighting often mostly happens at night.
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun? Change the ghosts, less swamp maybe. I understand this entire scenario might be getting reworked though

[Dalas120]

I understand this entire scenario might be getting reworked though

Yeah, Drowned Plains is generally considered the worst EI scenario, and I'm hoping to improve it in the next version.

In 1.19, right now I've changed the scenario's objective from "kill all enemy leaders" to "gather as much gold as possible before turns run out". The turns have been reduced to only 25, and each enemy leader now sits on a big pile of gold. Kill them if you want, or sit tight and farm a handful of villages.

Annoying elements are still present - lots of swamp, ghosts, etc - but I'd hoped that the new objective and shorter turn limit would make the scenario much less tedious. Do you think the changes I mention would have improved your experience?

[fredbobsmith2]

Hi, I'm not entirely sure honestly. The current version offers alot of gold and exp for the next scenario, and even if you make the scenario faster with bonus gold I think you'd need to maintain the exp potential somehow. Your suggestions would certainly make it less tedious (I'm assuming the map also gets drastically smaller, or the player has much more starting gold to have two assault teams). 25 turns may be too little but I'm sure you'll balance it out.

[EasSout]

Hello,
very interesting campaign since the new version.
On the Scenario "The Drowned Plains", there is an issue to replay it, creating inconsistencies. Below are the logs related to the issue.
Does someone know how to fix it ?
Thank you,

Setting mode to 1280x1024
Checking lua scripts... ok
20250609 07:46:51 error config: Error while loading the map: Unknown tile in map: (Iwr^VjE) 'Iwr^VjE'
20250609 07:47:14 warning engine: Could not find move_unit_fake route from 50,27 to 50,34: ignoring complexities
20250609 07:47:15 warning engine: Could not find move_unit_fake route from 50,34 to 46,37: ignoring complexities
20250609 07:47:53 error scripting/lua: lua/wml/message.lua:454: attempt to compare number with nil
stack traceback:
lua/wml/message.lua:454: in local 'cmd'
lua/wml-utils.lua:145: in field 'handle_event_commands'
lua/wml-flow.lua:5: in function <lua/wml-flow.lua:4>