Descent into Darkness

[Jozrael]

I mean, its a good change. The player is guaranteed to lose eventually. With the low village count, they can't recall as many troops (because they need to have positive gold at the end).

See, they used to be able to wait infinite turns before killing the leader, stashing up tons of gold.

However, with less villages, you won't be able to do this. I would suggest adding in a turn limit (I wonder if its possible to if the turn limit is reached, extending the turn limit, but eliminating the gold benefit: this would make it unlosable to turns, but still allow players to have a viable recruitment).

I.e. they need to be able to exit with a decent amount of gold, or they're just going to autolose the next scenario. So their objective should still be to finish as fast as possible.

There's a lot of stuff to consider . I think you made a very good first step by upping the difficulty, but now it will become impossible at point x (I haven't replayed the campaign, so I don't know when it would become too hard) because they won't be able to recruit sufficient numbers to defeat the hero AND exit with enough gold to be able to play the next scenario (which will again be harder).

When I said 'that's a guaranteed lesson for pain' I meant the player was gonna get shitpwnt after like 5 runthroughs.

Ideally, an excellent player should be able to keep going until the only reason they're losing is because of the insanely high output of the hero (like when they have like 1.5-2k+ gold), NOT because their economy can't afford to field units.

[Aethaeryn]

A problem with the last level is that it automatically overwrites the previous time the player plays it. Perhaps there should be some timestamp in the file name or every time a new round starts you add - 2, - 3, etc.? I'm not sure if it's possible to rename the map via WML though.

[zookeeper]

A problem with the last level is that it automatically overwrites the previous time the player plays it. Perhaps there should be some timestamp in the file name or every time a new round starts you add - 2, - 3, etc.? I'm not sure if it's possible to rename the map via WML though.

Might be possible to do...I'll look into it.

EDIT: No, not possible.

[sipahi]

This is my favorite campaign of the year. One of the rare ones there with the likes of Under the Burning Suns. Great job balancing- I played at Medium and it was well balanced. I just had to farm for gold at some of the limitless levels to make sure I had >500 the whole time.

I had one bug- the final level, which I love playing, I got "unknown unit type: Royal Swordsman". So I just changed the leader of the human faction to a Paladin- this worked fine and added a little more challenge to the usual ending when the Foolish Hero is left alone in his keep and I'm farming to have enough gold for the next round (I didn't think of the Nightgaunt assasination strategy). Maybe you can keep the human Foolish Hero as a Paladin.

I have repeated the Forever level 6 times now, and can definitely tell its getting harder. Well done with the extra gold balancing.

Great work Baufo. Many thanks for your contribution.

[Baufo]

I had one bug- the final level, which I love playing, I got "unknown unit type: Royal Swordsman". So I just changed the leader of the human faction to a Paladin- this worked fine and added a little more challenge to the usual ending when the Foolish Hero is left alone in his keep and I'm farming to have enough gold for the next round (I didn't think of the Nightgaunt assasination strategy). Maybe you can keep the human Foolish Hero as a Paladin.

Huh? I thought that one was fixed for ages
Oh well, I'll have a look.

I have repeated the Forever level 6 times now, and can definitely tell its getting harder. Well done with the extra gold balancing.

Great work Baufo. Many thanks for your contribution.

Thanks
However I feel that the main part of the credit still goes to esci, the original author of the campaign.

[Angry Andersen]

If people really want to replay the last level a couple of times, it would be nice if the main character was allowed to reach lvl4 (Ancient Lich).

[Baufo]

If people really want to replay the last level a couple of times, it would be nice if the main character was allowed to reach lvl4 (Ancient Lich).

Good idea, IMO.

[beetlenaut]

Fantastic scenario with a great story! My favorite part was when Malin went a little Anakin Skywalker when his town turned on him the second time. ("See how you die when you spurn the help of Malin Keshar?")

I have several comments. I'm playing the version that comes with 1.3.10.

In Beginning of the Revenge, my blood bat fell through the ice. Was that intentional? It didn't make sense for a flying unit.

Also, in the same scenario, why do skeletons drown when they fall through? After seeing that the orcs would drown, I thought that meant my skeletons would be safe. If you intend for them to be destroyed when the ice breaks, there should at least be a different reason why.

One more point on BotR: The scenario objectives probably should have an "or" in them. I thought I had to kill the leaders and escape with Malin. It's a little bit harder to do both as you have to stop recruiting and get Malin underway early on. I did manage that way, but it took a few tries.

In A Haunting in Winter, I wish I had gotten a warning about the possible turning of my units. (Someone else mentioned this too.) The one that turned was halfway up a one-wide passage with another ghost. A dwarf plugged it that same turn. I was in the awkward position of having to hope the enemy dwarf could blow through my ghost and destroy my former ghost before the rest of my units could leave me. Not likely! I lost almost immediately.

Anyway, thanks for all the work! (I like specters much better when they're on my side!)

[thespaceinvader]

The skels 'get mired in the thick mud' or something when the ice breaks. but can then go into the deep water without getting mired after it's broken. This is an inconsistency that's always bugged me slightly. And the ice definitely shouldn't break under bats or ghosts (in fact, i thought it never did, so i tend to use particularly ghosts to draw enemy units onto the ice in the hope of it breaking. It's a useful way to get rid of some of the fairly huge number of enemies that you face in this level without losing HP.

[beetlenaut]

I used ghosts and wraiths in a similar way myself. The only flying unit that fell through was the blood bat. I assume it's just an omission of some kind in the WML. I don't know WML (yet, anyway) so I haven't tried to check.

[Jozrael]

Actually, I cant stand it when units go on the ice. I see all that xp just draining down the hole...

What I love to do in this scenario, is use a single bat to distract the green army. For some reason, if it threatens their upper villages, the ENTIRE army diverts to fight it (then fly away, then fly back, repeat) In this vein, I can keep green off my back until I'm entirely done with blue and gunning up towards green, and I can even do it to separate the army piecemeal.

The scenario is ridiculously easy with this trick, even on hard. So you can see why I'm like NOOO when I see free xp going down the drain :p.

[thespaceinvader]

Ah, see, i haven't tried that way. Much more effective. I know what you mean about the XP draining away, but i hat elosing more than i hate wasting XP, and that was the only way i'd found to avoid green just whupping me.

[Jozrael]

It makes it ridiculously simple. =\. I mean, the only mildly complicated part is the decision about when to cross the bridge. I prefer waiting only two turns, since most of the crossbowmen come out first, and they're by far the most dangerous to my precious ghost line.

[BuBu]

I don´t know that is the right place, but is about this campaign.

The lv. 3 of the leader (malin) when it is been attacked (on guard) his image change to the old image of the lv2. dark mage. The version that i am using is 1.3.12 and i played in the middle difficult.

This campaign is very good and i liked it. The best part of it is next of the end.

I only could play until the 11º scenario where i destroyed that stone but don´t happen anything, i was with lv.2, but seems that need lv3.

I get lv 3 but i checked the box that erase the auto-save files and it erase the files that i have saved by me too. So i reload with the save of the first save of the scenario that wesnoth does (11º scenario) and it made a clear on my lv3 to lv1 of the leader and clear all my strong units that i had trained.

[cabbit]

Hello, I just finished playing through the "Descent into Darkness" campaign,
I would like to thank esci for writing it and everybody else who worked on it.
Overall, I enjoyed it very much, I thought it was well plotted and that the gameplay was overall quite enjoyable.

I have a few questions for anyone who wants to answer:

- In 'a small favor' the only way I could figure out how to succeed was to take four shaows and kill the enemy leader before he could recall any troops. In a way this kind of feels like a cheap shot, but was this the intention? Is there any other way to play that scenario successfully?

- In 'alone at last' I also had to play a particular way in order to win, I sent s wraith east as a decoy, then sent the others north, so Darian Valk sent most of his units to engage Sir Cadeaus when he showed up, and I was able to kill Valk with some nightgaunts, attacking from the north. When Dela showed up, however, I already had the aforementioned nightgaunts around and was able to kill her before she called any troops up. This also kind of feels like a cheap-shot to me, Did anybody use a different method for this scenario successfully?

By the way, I took the liberty of writing the walkthroughs for every scenario except "Descent into Darkness", and the first four scenarios (which already had walkthroughs) based off my experience playing the campaign..