TotE - Days of Fire help?

[sylvanfan]

Hi all,

Been a long time HOMM fan but haven't played for a while (skipped HOMM4 because I heard it wasn't as good, but glad to be back playing gen. 5!). I just bought a copy of the expansion pack without the original HOMMV disc 'cause there weren't any left. Been playing this over the holidays and happy to find this forum!

Anyhow, I started playing the custom map, "Days of Fire" with the Sylvan fraction because the whole campaign just got too long and I wanted to play some other fractions other than orcs and necromancers. I'm wondering if there's a walkthrough/strategy guide for this map because I've played this map 3 times, starting from "normal" level and downgrading to "easy" but still couldn't seem to solve it. There are Dungeon fractions that are gaining up on me and I always seems to be constrained by money and couldn't recruit enough monsters even though I have enough in the garrison. Before I even get a chance to upgrade to crystal dragon all the warlocks are already flooding in, all with black dragons no less! I've already built up Tieru, the main hero, to over level 22 or something and could only hold on to about 3 attacks with his spells before I lose out. Any help would be appreciated!

p.s. kinda wish the phoenix belongs to Sylvan, i think it fits the story better and looks like it's really powerful with the stats, but I haven't got a chance to play it yet. Love the graphics overall, except sometimes it's really difficult to grab the resources on the ground with the angle.

[RommeL_666]

phoenix doesnt belong to anyone,its summon creature.
Well to me if he should belong to somebody it should be Hell (beacuse looks like hell creature) even that he isnt "evil" as Hell is.

as for the map, do you collect gold instead exp from chests?beacuse thats the best way to have gold and more creatures,its like fast rush on maps,dont worry for exp with more creatures you will be able to take harder difficult neutrals and have more exp. Also try to flag important mines for Sylvan at start,lumber mill,crystal,etc.If you are behind in development in city and low on gold hardly you will be able to take down the enemy,but if you have to try to lure them to attack you in a city.

[Asheera]

Very important tip: upgrade the Hunters early to Arcane Archers, they are very overpowered and will help you a lot in creeping

[RommeL_666]

Very important tip: upgrade the Hunters early to Arcane Archers, they are very overpowered and will help you a lot in creeping

I was just playing now the map he mentioned on hard, interesting map,almost no treasure chest,lot of resources and neutrals but very very little gems, it took me some time to build Arcane archers. Computer doesnt seems to go attack too often, but he had also the same numbers in forces as I do.
My tip is not to build in second town,just upgrade it to bring 2000 gold per turn,nothing else,maybe little after some archer building.

[Asheera]

Well one important thing to do with two towns is to not upgrade the dwellings in both (at least, if the towns are not too far away), since you'll be able to upgrade your creatures in the other one anyway. Building basic dwellings is another story, since it increases your creature growth. So that is recommended if you have enough money on the map (and preferably 1-2 gold mines), to have a larger army overall.

[sylvanfan]

Thanks Rommel and Asheera! I made the mistake of upgrading both, hoping to get more creatures to defeat and run out of money. I'm restarting the map and decided to strike early this time, and so far I'm lasting a bit longer. Checked out the "new strategy for Sylvan" on this site and building according to the instruction and find it quite useful!

Questions:
1. How do you usually build up your heroes? In the past I used to build one "super hero" and try to give him all the artifacts and exp points, but this time I find it might be necessary to build 2-3 better heroes because the rivals coming from all over the place. (Or maybe I'm just too new and slow to crush the enemy towns and that's why I always get attacked from all over the place.)

2. Is there a bug with the "mark of the avenger" (can't remember the exact name, you know the town feature you could select preferred enemy list) feature in Sylvan town and the "rain of arrow" spell? I selected "Minotaur" on my preferred list but it always seem to ignore it during battle, when I use the "Rain of Arrow" spell and didn't attack the minotaur stack. The other monsters on my list worked though.

3. How does one couple the "Imbue Arrow"+ Rain of Arrow + Lightning + preferred enemy list? With this I could get a "simulated" Chain lightning going on during a battle, but it doesn't seem to work all the time, it works sometimes and I'm not sure how I did it.

Thanks!

[Asheera]

1. Depends. I, myself, prefer to have one high-level hero, accompanied by a 'scout' (low-level hero) that picks up resources and flags mines that were 'freed' by the high-level hero, so that you won't waste unnecessary movement points with the main hero. And I also use a third hero to do some other miscellaneous stuff, like transferring armies faster from the town to the main hero, etc. Of course it also depends on the map size, if it's a very large or huge map you may need more heroes.

2. Hmm, no bug that I know of. However, what you select there applies to one hero only (the one that currently visited the town), and the hero must kill at least 2 full growth populations of that creature to be able to select it in that guild.

3. Provided you have the mana (you'll need mana for all those Lightning spells cast on ALL favored enemies), yes, you'll cast Lightning on all creatures targeted by Rain of Arrow. You can also cast the Chain Lightning spell itself on all those targets and you'll hit a lot of enemies (however, it will also cost a lot more mana)

[sylvanfan]

Thanks Asheera. Will try again to see, although I'm pretty sure Rain of Arrow doesn't work on Minotaurs for me still.

For question 3, though, my hero didn't learn chain lightning yet, and for some reason an "Imbue Arrow + lightning" effect stayed a second round and with the Rain of Arrow the lightning struck all the ones on the my preferred list (again ignoring minotaur), but I'm not quite sure how this was done. Will keep experimenting.

[Asheera]

Once you Imbue once, it will stay forever until you change the spell to something else (Imbue again)

Also, how many favorite enemies do you have? three? four? I may have a guess as to why the Minotaur isn't attacked.

[Ed Robinson]

For information only, if you want to try playing Sylvan with Phornix troops, there is a user created map available here called "Shadow Dreams" made by the Grumpy Old Wizard. If you select the Sylvan option you'll get a Phoinix generator that will give you one a week.

[sylvanfan]

Cool! Nice to know that imbue stays. I only have 3 favorites though...not at the final level of Avenger yet... But minotaurs are usually my first or second on my list.

Hey that new map sounds like a fun option, I was wondering how I could get more stand alone maps. Just don't want to go into a campaign when I don't have a lot of time to finish it.

[Asheera]

Oh, I thought you had Ultimate Avenger and thus 4 favorite enemies, which requires the Pendant of Mastery artifact equipped. If the Minotaurs were the last (fourth) fav. enemy, and you un-equipped that artifact and get back to Expert Avenger, that could have explained why the minotaurs were not attacked. But alas it's not the case...

[PhoenixReborn]

This is a fairly tough map because you are surrounded.

I just finished it.

I took 100 arcane archers at level 17 with some support troops and charged underground.

Tieru has a huge advantage because of the swift striker ability which means that all of his units go before the enemies do. I took attack -> tactics so my troops could get all the way across...then the arcanes shoot the enemy power stack (dragons, hydras etc.). Also I had logistics to get around the map fast.

I had to let an enemy by Tieru so I was worried that I was going to lose my main castles but fortunately I found a high level (10) hero in the tavern. It's always wise to check the tavern on day 1. This hero, Anwen, with all the troops that I hadn't been able to afford before, was able to defend successfully.

edit: don't be afraid to trade resources for others or for gold, you can get plenty of market places.

[sylvanfan]

Oh, so that's how you reach the ultimate level, was wondering how i could ever get enough exp points to reach that. Didn't even know about such artifact until now.

I also just finished the map, finally! I think logistics is key for this one so I could let Tieru and my other strong heroes go back quickly to defend the castles. It took me more days than I should have, but I was sort of enjoying it, exploring all the new features that the new game offers. So glad to be playing HOMM again, but on the other hand, it's a bit too addicting!

[PhoenixReborn]

Congrats man. I agree with you.