The Rootless

[Anekron]

Lich-Lord Jevyan is defeated, and the orcs are left in disarray. With the magical gates from the far East sealed, the warlords resort to their traditional ways—seeking to overcome adversity with blood and razor-sharp steel. Amid this chaos, a cunning assassin named Arshag embarks on a quest to secure a new homeland for his people.

(Rookie level, 7 scenarios.)

Discord: @anekron
GitHub repo: https://github.com/AnekronCZ/The_Rootless
WWW: https://www.anekron.cz/posts/2023-10-28-the-rootless/
Trailer: https://odysee.com/@Anekron:0/TheRootless:6
Konrad2's playthrough streams: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3oj ... vBHk1wSLlD

[Gothyoba]

Can this be played without any context from TRoW? If so I will try it out once it comes to the add-ons server. I can see you have put a lot of work on it and I am excited to see it in action.

[Gothyoba]

I have played the first scenario and I loved it! The strategic side of the game was fun, and while it did not pose much of a challenge to me I can imagine it as being hard (but not too hard) for a beginner. I played it on the easiest difficulty to see how well it works as a campaign to introduce the orcs as a faction, and I think it does it well. I like how it gives you little tips around the gameplay sometimes, similarly to TSG. I actually think that a rookie orcish campaign would be needed in the mainline to introduce the faction. The coming of the king was interesting and added some tension to the scenario, as the humans are essentially unstopable against the player’s force. However, I would like to point out a small typo. Towards the start of the scenario both Ovob and Arshag say strenght instead of strength. I am excited to see more of this! Based on the intro, I do not think this needs any knowledge of the events in TRoW.

[Anekron]

Hi! Thanks for your kind words!

You don't need to play TRoW and WoF (the upcoming drake campaign) to understand the story, but keep in mind the campaign takes place after both of these so there can be "spoilers". Thanks for noticing the typo, I'm not a native English speaker so I make mistakes like that quite often. Will fix in the next version.

[Atreides]

Played scenario 1, easy level. Lost. Bad advice to suggest getting Ashag xp. He got killed in 1 round by a single grunt attacking.

[Anekron]

I understand it can be harder for beginners. Might adjust the hint to be more concrete (that it pays off to kill already wounded units with your leader, or slowed by Clerila's attack).

Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

[white_haired_uncle]

You sure you want such a low rank that it show up with the mainline campaigns (where we're not looking for it)?

strenght > strength

prefferred > preferred

S1:

Spoiler:

Torak's death is a defeat condition?

I only get the "you can recruit" message if Torak attacks me, not if I attack him. And there's a HUGE difference in his defenses (which he loses in the next scenario?).

Arshag loses slow when advancing? That's not much of an advancement, if any.

If this is a "rookie" level, perhaps units that can't pick up the crossbow should save something to give a hint that someone else needs to pick it up. Though, so far, I'm not seeing any benefit from picking it up.

find a some place > find some place

The Deal: No gold carry over, but thanks for the early finish bonus.

around it's opening > around its opening (use "it's" ONLY when replacing "it is", it's an exception to most of the rules).

The Dark: objs say no early finish bonus, but the end it says 21/turn (though I got nothing, because it took me 35 turns, even with massive cheating).

The Deep: I can recall/recruit 4 units one turn 1, but I only have 3 castle tiles?

[Anekron]

Wow, these are very valuable findings! Most of them really are bugs and I'll try to get a patch out as soon as I can. Also thanks for spotting the typos / grammar errors.

However:

Toruk getting high defenses temporarily is simply a way of preventing other enemy units from swarming him and killing him before the player even gets to control him. Since people play the map in quite a few ways, it's possible for you to get Toruk during the night where he can then be sniped by 3 Orcish Archers for example. Will think about how to make this clearer to the player.

The crossbow bit should really get a can't use message, but picking it up does have a benefit. It either advances any Archer to Crossbowman, or, if picked up by a Crossbowman or a Slurbow, it gives them marksman specialty on their ranged attack.

[Anekron]

Patch 1.0.1

• strenght corrected
• the hint about fighting with your leader is now more specific
• You can recruit Grunts message is now consistent for both ways you get Toruk, and also appears regardless of difficulty
• non-archer units now prompt you to give the crossbow to some archer
• "find a some place" corrected
• carryovers and early finish bonuses should now be consistent with the objectives
• made it clearer that you can recruit in S4 and S5b where there's not a traditional keep
• "around it's opening" corrected
• The Dark difficulty lowered (there was an oversight that sometimes caused too many undead to spawn)
• The Deep hint now changes with difficulty and recruit spots are clearly marked on the map for the first turn
• fixed a bug in The Deep that allowed for a hero to be killed without it triggering a defeat
• commented out the rank line in main.cfg. It was an oversight caused by the campaign originally starting as an AOI rework
• The Deep orcish dream difficulty lowered

Again, many thanks for bringing these bugs and QoL features to my attention!

@white_haired_uncle -- wasn't able to find the "preffered" misspelling.

[SexyPringles]

Very nice campaign with endearing plot and characters, this is how a campaign should be made . Every scenario is different and objectives change accordingly. Maps are not too large just the right size in my opinion. Puzzles are also a nice addition. I also played the both paths to see how different the endings would be.

all in all, it's a 10/10 for me. I only have one complaint, well more of a nitpick. I would have liked a some kind of epilogue.

Spoiler:

Like what happened to Toruk and Stuurg? What about Logalmier since I understood that he did not die in the end, and what about the elves who started to use dark magic, did they all die or did some escape? Then again maybe you left it without epilogue to leave the ending open to players interpretation, which is fine too

[Anekron]

I'm glad you liked it! Also nice to see you've apparently got the one ending where Toruk survives as well (it's not a given even on The Deep path).

Not including the epilogue was a conscious choice since I didn't want to dilute the impact of the ending. I might still reconsider since I can also see how some players would prefer some definitive closure. It could reward people for repeated playthroughs as well.

Thanks a lot for your kind words!

[Anekron]

Patch 1.0.2

• young wolves are now more consistent with mainline wolf units
• removed the old young wolf sprites; they only have a brief appearance that doesn't warrant unique art
• Morvin's crossbow now behaves like all other items and player can choose not to pick it up
• Morvin's camp now only appears after the hunt is over and can't be seen on the minimap during the opening cutscene
• heroes won't enter water in the final cutscene of The Siege anymore
• a light now burns in the void for Toruk's soul if he's lost in The Deep
• dreams now collapse back into the void once the sequence is over

A smaller, quality of life update.

[bobby_brown]

Hello,

I am finding the scenario nice so far. But I cannot get past the middle of the Hunt scenario.

I have run into a bug in my main chartacter. Upon advancement of NightBlade, I get a message:
"Error while playing the game: game_error: Could not find unit being advanced to: null",
and the game closes. I also notice that when I advance to NightBlade in the Hunt scenario the weapon special goes back from slow to poison.

Perhaps there is an ALMA that is not yet available, thus it gets stuck ?

UPDATE: I have been able to continue simply by not letting my main character upgrade.

Best,
BB

[Anekron]

EDIT:
I originally reacted by asking you for your save file and attached the following picture, showing that the advancement works:

But now I believe I now know why it happens. It triggers when you advance Arshag with the default AMLA (the red heart) and then you advance him again. It does not happen to the mounted variant, just to the basic Nightblade form of Arshag. I'll look into it and publish a fix, probably within 24 hours. It should be quite easy to correct.

In the meantime, upgrade Arshag with non-default AMLA upgrades first, that way you won't trigger this bug.

Sorry for the inconvenience, I'm glad you like the rest of your playthrough.

[Anekron]

Patch 1.0.3

• Arshag no longer loses slow special during the hunting bit
• the game should no longer crash during the hunt if Arshag advances while Nightblade
• Arshag's XP AMLA requirements are now consistent between unmounted and mounted variant
• Arshag no longer "trains" with slowing knives after he already mastered them via AMLA

It was actually a more complicated issue and now I finally know why other users, such as white_haired_uncle, complained about losing the slow special. The AMLA didn't accomodate for the possibility of Arshag advancing to Nightblade (or as Nightblade) in the hunting part of The Hunt scenario. This should no longer happen.

Please note that Arshag losing slowing knives after the hunting part is an intended behaviour. As indicated in dialogue, he just practices with them in the way Clerila recommended to him earlier. It's on the player to award Arshag enough XP so he gets the slow special permanently.