Post: Talk about your Draconic experiences!

[cjlee]

I've played Draconic, the map that most people praise so highly. Now I really want to share my experiences with others and hear how they played it, so that I might learn something about other strategies and gaming styles.

Here are my observations from playing it. As this map offers so much, do take note that my experience is almost certainly extremely different from yours. I hope to hear yours!

I first tried out Draconic using the theme castle type, Chaos (for dragons).

I could not get past the minotaurs guarding the prison area at all. I tried many times, using all tactics I could think of, on the bridge as well as on the volcanic surface. Eventually I cheated. If anyone knows how to beat these minotaurs without relying on a succession of non-blocks, please let me know.

With Chaos, I did not have a good hero line-up and made very slow progress, eventually giving up because I felt so bored.

Several (real life) months later I came back and played it with with Death. I took Veldrynus (bone dragon raiser), Rife (Archmage) and Vaudy the Thief.

I trained Rife in Life and Order magic although he eventually got Grandmaster Chaos and Death as well. (both proved useless). I started with 35000 gold (normal setting I think) and later got Tarmaskas when I could afford him.

I focused on grandmaster pathfinding very early for Vaudy and focused on maximum mobility, since this map requires so much traveling.

I don't know if I did anything wrong, but after rejecting melee earlier because I wanted to max out my Grandmaster Order magic/ Grandmaster Pathfinding first, my heroes simply couldn't get archery or melee despite maxing out in all other skills. They had to rely on troops to do all the fighting.

I finished in the eighth month.

While Metathron said somewhere that he got his heroes to level 70 on this map, I found that impossible. By the time I got to the two Evil Sisters Thuzad and Thu-whatever in Month 7, my heroes were only level 30. I was utterly trounced, so I reloaded and spent the last month visiting every level up tree and arena on the map, getting to about level 52.

My three heroes and their vampire legion (or near-legion) plus bone dragons and devils aplenty crushed neutral stacks easily, but they had a tough time against enemy heroes. The battle at Celestial Heavens was incredibly difficult and it was nearly impossible to avoid losing most of my army. I had to teleport my heroes to stand on others' corpses to prevent that annoying Divine Intervention.

I notice the mapmaker deliberately banned Hypnotize, but it was available in one place – the Tome of Order. At first I did not want to use Hypnotize, but I simply could not defeat the evil sisters even with 800 vampires, 97 bone dragons and 103 devils and my 4 heroes ALL of which had Robe of the Guardian and other good artifacts. Eventually I gave up and placed the Tome of Order in Rife's hand, since he had the crown of enchantment also. I won this map with minimum casualties in my last two (i.e. versus Sisters) battles.

I am extremely sure that I could have played this map far better. I just don't know how.

-How can I get my heroes to level 70 like you guys did?
-How can I get melee or archery?
-How can I win WITHOUT hypnotize or mind spells (e.g. I also beserked one sister's 1200 medusas)?
-How can I make my heroes stronger?
-How can I win this using another faction?
-How can I prevent my heroes from morphing into another class? At lower levels, it is fairly easy to keep a hero focused on being a Ranger or General. But because Draconic has so many places to learn skills, by level 18 most people should have maxed out the skill slots for their class. Eventually you will be forced to learn other skills, which will change their class.
-what is the best hero line up for facing these nasty sisters? I won with Four Archmages, but I don't think I played well.
-If I get four heroes, what are the best skills to have against the sisters?
-Did anyone win with fewer heroes? Given the importance of buffing your side against their huge dragon and dark champion armies, how did you guys do it?

Necromancy allowed me to raise lots of vampires, which made it so much easier. Furthermore their creatures allow faster movement. But no other faction has similar advantages and I'm pretty sure I would be crushed if playing Draconic with any other faction, especially no-magic Barbarian heroes. I am also uncertain about how to win this with Nature.

-Can anyone win this WITHOUT the use of Order magic? I.e. all four other spell schools and potions allowed.

I'm an experienced but not really good player. For a guide as to my playing skills, I finished the original Life, Order and Nature campaigns on Champion Difficulty, Death on Expert, Barbarian on Hard/Advanced and Chaos on Normal. I am sure many of you guys played Draconic far better than me, so I would love to hear from you on how you beat this map!

[cjlee]

I am amazed that four years have passed and no one replied on my post. Surely Heroes 6 was not that exciting?

In any case, I am now stuck big time again. This time I decided to play Nature on Championship.

With my main army consisting of Rife, Tarmakas, Timotheus and a barbarian, I could only get them to level 32 despite fighting every battle possible. I had to go back and use the trees and arenas. And even that got me only to level 52.

With nature creatures, there was no way I could field a creature stack large enough to fight the 450 angels at CelestialHeavens. Summoning magic was useless. And four level 52s vs 6 level 70s? No contest.

Can't finish this map on championship difficulty playing nature, much as I'd feared. I have only finished Draconic once before, playing as Death (the most powerful faction). If anyone has experiences to share, that would be awesome!

[Maciek]

I remember playing Draconic years ago. There's a tower-like quest hut in the bottom right corner where you can buy experience and even levels if you visit it on 7th day of the week. I remember getting a lot of high level heroes with its help and remember getting enough gold to train all the heroes I wanted to high levels was a problem. A bunch of Lords was very helpful. Looking at the map in editor, I don't see any setting banning Hypnotize. Another quest hut in that area sells +attack/defense and another offers spell scrolls (including Hypnotize).

Designing my super-hero party in the late game was certainly fun. And I remember that the enemy heroes were still quite strong compared to mine, despite super-heroes on my side.

[cjlee]

I remember playing Draconic years ago. There's a tower-like quest hut in the bottom right corner where you can buy experience and even levels if you visit it on 7th day of the week. I remember getting a lot of high level heroes with its help and remember getting enough gold to train all the heroes I wanted to high levels was a problem. A bunch of Lords was very helpful. Looking at the map in editor, I don't see any setting banning Hypnotize. Another quest hut in that area sells +attack/defense and another offers spell scrolls (including Hypnotize).

Designing my super-hero party in the late game was certainly fun. And I remember that the enemy heroes were still quite strong compared to mine, despite super-heroes on my side.

Maciek, I'm really stuck. By now my heroes are too powerful and 19000 experience is a joke. MY wrists can't take the repeititive strain. I have millions in gold thanks to my dozen or so lords (I would outfit an entire party of lords and march them around for free exp). But they are still vastly inferior to Celestialheavens' heroes.

On another note, do you remember Draconic2? I tried playing it, but into the third week I'm stuck. The main garrison is always attacked by an ultra powerful force of level 35s leading a high level Asylum force. So the main garrison and the city of Brisbane are always lost. And I don't know what to do after that. Really can't remember how I won this map years ago (it was on easy, the way a weak player like me wins most of Veldrynus' maps!).

[Maciek]

Try visiting the tower on 7th day of any week. You will need your millions of gold.

I remember starting Draconic 2 years ago, but not finishing it. So, I don't know if I finished Draconic 2 or not.

The idea of getting updated quests from the Council Tower was a good one, but their quests were too open ended. Finding Celestial Heavens and Theodorus after being assigned these quests was more a matter of luck than design. The XL map size and open design worked against the map here, you didn't so much search for and find your objectives as stumble upon them after wandering around for a while.

So it might be a good idea to first look around on Novice or in editor and locate some objectives.

Btw., I'm not sure if I played any of the original campaigns on Champion. Probably finished them all long before I started playing on Champion and never replayed them later.

[Evendar]

I just finished Draconic with Order, other selected was Death.

I never lost a single unit the entire battle. The initial castle I had to use a potion of Immortality to have my hero live through the battle.

As soon as I conquered the Death Castle I went and got The Grail.

All I needed to do that was have all heroes with Grand Master Magic Resistance.

I had 3 heroes with the following skills

#1 Combat, Order, Life, Nature, Death
#2 Combat, Order, Life, Chaos, Tactics
#3 Combat, Order, Life, Chaos, Scouting

I had Hero 2 and 3 with Crowns of Enchantment, and used Chaos, then Cloud of Chaos when I got it to tie down all elementals and undead that my vampires could not Life Drain to heal.

I would use Mass Slow, and Teleport if I had to for crowd control as well. My Genies would create illusions of vampires as well as targets.

My army had Hero, Hero, Hero, Vampires, Titans, Genies, Magi.