Tribes of the East → Flying to the Rescue → Summ

[cjlee]

On my latest run on Heroic, I got Zehir to level 28 on the first map. (You can read how I did it there.)



By this map, Zehir was level 30. That still isn't enough to do anything for Wulfstan since his level 25 is about 1/4 Zehir's exp, but it means I created two other level 25 heroes on day 1!

(All with town portal, learned through Scholar since I got Inga offered to me right away.)



But don't think I've outsmarted Nival!



Since I've played this map several times before, I notice that enemy heroes got much tougher on this map.



When I had a weaker Zehir, enemy heroes were only level 25 and fled all the time whenever my level 25 Wulfstan approached with a sizeable army.



Now with Zehir at level 30, it seems Nival sends level 28 heroes (i'm guessing, between Zehir and Wulfstan's level) on this map. They don't carry big armies, but are very, very tough and don't flee until after a lot of damage is done. Sure, I know I'll win - but I keep suffering severe casualties because they can hit and kill faster than I can resurrect. And my other two level 25 heroes are useless because they don't have good artifacts and I don't have enough troops to spread out to them - they need very big armies to take on the level 28s.



So evidently Nival planned this map to give Wulfstan a hard time without assistant superheroes - and they succeeded.



But on the good side,Wulfstan gets thousands of xp every battle.

[cjlee]

I played the battle between Zehir and Rolf over many times, and found it pretty tough. Rolf has fantastic anti-magic capabilities, puppet master spam and all his troops can spam runes nonstop.



You, Zehir, are a nerdy, weak wizard with absolutely nothing superior to Rolf except lots of mana. Even if you outnumbered him using a huge dwarven army, your dwarves are far inferior to his dwarves due to the lack of perks and runes.



On average Rolf inflicts 3-4 times as many casualties on you as you can on him. So his troops are really stained with blood...



Eventually i figured out the real way to win. It really foreshadows Wulfstan's winning trick in the final boss fight as well.



USE DIVINE VENGEANCE!



Since Zehir's troops are close to useless, Zehir is the guy who makes the difference. I separated the troops early on without attacking the enemy. This keeps them apart so that storm strike can't be transmitted.



Then I put everyone on defense. Didn't attack a single enemy.



The enemy came to me and started killing away. Rolf blasted away with his puppet master and frenzy spam. I let him do as he pleased, keeping Zehir waiting so Zehir's initiative keeps rising.



Then I got into action and practically wiped out 90% of Rolf's army using divine vengeance alone. (The rest were killed on retaliation strikes). It was awesome; after about 3 complete turns were over, entire enemy stacks were vanishing each time Zehir cast divine vengeance. And there was nothing Rolf could do! He had already puppet mastered and frenzied my guys...
Edited on Mon, May 30 2011, 04:13 by cjlee

[Kardszy]

Something about dwarf army I found, is that they benefit from soldier's luck the most out of all factions, 5/7 units:

skirmisher's cripple, bear's roar, battlerager's bash,rune priest's mark of fire, flamelord's flamewave (awsome when it kicks in, small version of Kal'Beleth's attack in HOMM5 final battle )







About prepareing Wulfstan for final:

Fortress is my favorite faction and Wulf is an awsome hero (had over 60 def in HOF on a Tier1 stack!!! O.O ...not to mention the higher ones )

For this reason I didn't give a rat's *** about the score and waited for 10 months till attacking anything above, ...neadless to say Zehir got over 10mill exp at the end so mentoring Wulf got him right to lvl32 ^.^



About skills:

IMPORTANT: unless you love the mass spells, lose light, Wulf will keep the spells, and you will res with runes anyway, so tiny res-ed stack is enough to use the rune.



I went for the ultimate (takeing only 50% dmg and with high def )

For the other skills I had several in mind but choose:

Luck-master: Soldier's luck (reason mentioned before) and Warlock's luck due to not so high power

Sorcery-advanced: insight and brilliance



-The others I considered are

a)Luck magic res and dwarven luck, Attack tactics and offensive formation (this skill haven't made as much difference as I though in previous games)

b) Enilghtenment with tap runes and int. plus Sorcery

c) Enilghtenment: int., exalation and Leadership rune attendant aaand empathy





Articrafts:

Dwarven set: no slow, frenzy... zehir is fine on his own without it

Dragon set's ring and necklace

Sar-Issu's set: ring (simple reason: Zehir has enough mana plus 2/4 and 4/4 items give the same bonus for a wizard)

Death set: staff and cloack, was lucky enough to buy them



have fun in final all ^_^
Edited on Mon, Dec 12 2011, 07:51 by Kardszy

[Wheeler Dealer]

I'm playing on Hard, not heroic, so that might be most of the reason that Rolf wasn't too hard, I hit him in week 2 month 3. My army was 68 Arch mages, 45 Master Djinn, 24 Rakshasha and 12 Titans. I think my key move was castsing Puppet Master on his Thunder Thanes my first chance and then using them to block his Lava Dragons. Maybe I just got a lucky battlefield but the dragons didn't get into the fight until it was pretty much over. I didn't use the trick of having Vampirism overwrite PM.



I played virtually the whole scenario with Zehir wearing the two enlightenment artifacts and he opened all chests and took experience every time. Zehir was able to mentor Wulfstan up to level 26 at the end.

[Tyber Zann]

Iv noticed people mention that the morale bonus caps out at +5, (I'm guessing luck as well) even though the number can go above 5. In the first HoMM 5 release, it never went above 5, but in ToE it does.



I'm thinking maybe it still caps at 5, but the extra points only kick in if something reduces ur creatures moral (sorrow, banshee howl, artifacts, etc.) Like, if ur morale was 7, it would still be five, but if the enemy hero had a ring of broken will (-2 enemy morale) it would level ur morale to 5 (7-2).



This would make sense, cause I'm pretty sure the number represents percentage.



2 morale means 20% chance to achieve a morale bonus (same with luck for luck bonus).



So, if ur morale or luck was 10, that would mean 100% chance to achieve a morale or luck bonus, which its not. Iv had 11 morale before and it still only triggered about 50% of the time.



If anyone knows the actual formula for the morale / luck bonus, a little clarity would be much appreciated.

[Tyber Zann]

Crazy battle with Rolf. He must have used the Rune of Dumbass when I wasn't looking, cause he certainly f***ed himself. This is on Hard, so maybe he's a little less of a moron on Heroic, but I think he would have done better if he just hit the auto combat button (I always thought the A.I. fought like auto combat A.I. but I guess Rolf just has to do things his way. He's a boss right?)



Ok, so this is how it happened, ill try to be specific but I don't have my computer in from of me so the figues are approximate (I was up most of last night preparing for this battle. It was actually fun, but when Rolf started doing his thing I could just picture circus music in the background).



Month 4-5, I actually skipped most of the stray resources and minor artifacts. Just snagged the important ones (and couldnt help remember a few important locations from looking at the map before)(also lucked out with a staff of the netherworld from the artifact merchant in the flying town).



Ok, so after dropping the Dwarven king set with Wulfy and making a final stop in the flying town, I made it to Rolf near the end of month 4, and my setup was as follows -



----------------------------



Battle mages x 100 ish w/ initiative + attack arti.



Master Gremlins x 350 ish w/ health + defense + initiative arti.



Magnetic Golems x 180 ish w/ health + defense + initiative arti.



Obsidian Gargoyles x 300 ish w/ health + defense arti.



Rune Patriarch x 100 ish



Shield Guard (the 3rd/alternate upgrade, can't remember the name, the blue one, the one without boobs on his head) x 400 ish



Magma Dragon x 30 ish



----------------------------------



So the army was fairly evenly matched. It was potentialy anyones game, especially considering Rolfs spellbook. (Funny when a dwarf can threaten a wizard with magic).





As for the heroes, Rolf is Rolf. Can't remember his stats, but he was basically like what I've read (except his behavior on the field, which I'm getting to).



My Zehir is average. I Didn't get EVERY artifict, and I'm still only level 29 even after the fight (iv also skipped all "call to arms" except in the first mission with the golems).



I actually skipped "Arcane Omniscience (I know, wtf right?) I did this cause I always just use summoning and destructive magic anyway with Zehir (in the campaigns u can get ur spellpower high enough to use both very effectively). Although, since I'm on Hard, I would probably have gone for it on Heroic (I couldn't get past Raelags crazy soul scar invasion mission in the first release on Heroic so I dropped to Hard and have rolled with it since, but found more than a few levels too easy. Guess I gotta play it all again on Heroic! I'm sure I actually will some day, sooner than later))



Anyway, no fancy tricks with this guy, I'm a pheonix and fire elemental kinda guy, with a dash of implosion and a %50 chance of meteor showers.



So, when I went toe to toe with Rolf, I was a little nervous. I knew he'd be jacked, and after reading the page I get the whole PM thing with him. So what did he do with it?



Basically, what happened in this battle is, I used a standard "shooters behind a checker of small tanks" formation, with the golems on point cause of their magnetism, complete immunity (NOTHING touched these things, even after Rolf read the entire "Dark Magic encyclopaedia 2 times over), their one time re-building thing with the gremlins, and because they can actually attack.



That left only my magma Dragons, which I put in the opposite corner as a means of forcing the enemy to split their forces and deal with the threat before it reached the other side of the map.



So, i opened with my summoning (pheonix, then blade barrier, then fire warriors, phantom forces etc.



So what was Rolf doing when his turn came around? Hmmm, PUPPET MASTER!



At first I'm thinking "$hit on a shingle", but then I observed the effect this had.



It seems the A.I. would naturally target ur "most powerful" stack, which in this case was my Magma Dragons (the highest tier in my army). I had managed to move the dragons halfway toward the enemy before he PM'd them. So I was expecting him to march them right back at me. But, what happened is, HIS OTHER TROOPS STARTED ATTACKING THE DRAGONS!!! Seriously, the PM'd ones. They'd retaliate. Then, when the dragons turn came around, they where already half surrounded on my side, cause all their attackers had turned around. So the dragons had to walk backward towards his army, and his units kept hounding them, so they just got trapped in the corner!



Rolf went on to use suffering and weakness and such, but since most of my damage was coming from Zehir and recycled pheonix and fire elementals, it was no problem. I cast arcane armor on the dragons and they survived long enough for me to wipe out most of their forces. By the time they got those PMd dragons down to about 5 units, I was finishing off the last of their stragglers.



It was bizzare to watch this. I wish I'd saved the replay but it was like 3 am and I was half asleep.

[Tyber Zann]

Jeeze, I also noticed a few people say they hadn't figured out how to use runes! Actually, it took me some time 2. Got through most of the dwarf missions in HoF before I realized how to use them.



Runes are triggered by individual unit stacks, not the dwarf heroes themselves.



When a dwarf units turn comes along, there is little bar above the ATB bar on the bottom of the screen that will have a list of available runes. Hover over it to see its cost, and click to activate. Under normal circumstances, a unit stack may activate one rune at a time before each turn (during their turn, before u give them an order) and only if commanded by a RuneMage hero (dwarf).



I find runes are awesome in the late game, but can seriously f**k u over if used in the early game.



Unless u have a special ability that reduces cost, each rune requires physical resources to activate. It's not much, but u can easily burn through ur entire resource stockpile in a single battle without realizing it.



I find it best to wait till uv built ur town and have a good stockpile of resources. then u can Rune away without risking going broke over a few temporary combat perks. The abilities are awesome, just use them sparringly unless ur rich or can reduce the cost through skills or town structures (I think its the grail structure that eliminates wood and ore costs involved with Tuning)

[1hongkong1]

could you use Magical Immunity on friendlies when you attack Rolf ?? so negate pm and frenzy ?

[Monthar]

I started playing this again recently and I noticed if you give one of the Dwarf heroes Scholar when it it mentored by Zahir, you can then get town Portal from Zahir and give it to all your Dwarves. Then using Town Portal, you can get all your Dwarves up to the surface (2 per turn) after Zahir summons his town.



I'd suggest getting Expert Logistics, Pathfinding and Warpath on everyone. Then both main heroes can focus on the battles and the others can follow them flagging mines, creature dwellings and grabbing resources.