DescentIntoDarkness

Saving Parthyn

You'll start the battle with three loyal human soldiers. Don't bother leveling them, because they go away at the end of the scenario. Likewise, all you can recruit are zombies, and they won't be worth recalling. If you're going to collect experience for anyone, it should be your main character.

Try to take advantage of terrain and daytime. I stayed away from the water hexes directly close to the other shore since the defenders have a bonus if they attack water standing units when still standing on land. Block the ford. Then rush for the northern shore if you can reach land. Capture villages and let your human allies do the hard work.

A Peaceful Valley

Do not try to solve this level without entering the Swamp. Once you enter the Swamp with either Malin Keshar or Darken Volk you will get Ghouls which make the difference between impossible and reasonable to master this level. Bats are useful to capture faraway villages but have little chance against the guards, unless you move two or three of them together. Use walking corpses as placeholders for captured villages and use them on wounded goblins to add more troops to your arsenal. A combined effort with walking corpses and Darken Volk will kill off the leader and relieve a lot of stress.

Note that the ghouls that rise from the swamp are loyal units.

A Haunting in Winter

You can recruit Ghosts on this level. At one point there's a special event: one of your ghosts (the first one that gains any experience?) will go rebel and attack you. Kill him quick. Move a few of your other ghosts up north -- you can get easy experience from killing the dwarves as they wade through the swamp. Your two heroes can kill the enemy bosses with their magic attacks.

Addition by Cabbit: This is a good oppertunity to gain experience for your ghosts. While both the Wraith and Shadow units are useful, it is important to have at least 4 shadows by a certain scenario. Also note that there are two routes to the dwarven leader. One is through the swamp, but you can also send flying units over the chasm to the south of the swamp and attack the dwarves on two fronts.

Beginning of the Revenge

Do not move non-flying units onto the ice next to the bridge which separates you from the Orcs' valley, it does not carry much weight. Use this to your advantage and try and lure high level orcs to their demise by placing ghosts in the middle of the ice. Ghosts and Corpses can cross the mountains left of your starting fortress. Unfortunately the fire arrows are quite effective against ghosts. I finished the south Orc first and had an easy time to defeat the north Orc. Ghosts and Bats can capture difficult to reach villages and move on, thus weakening your foes.

Orc War

Starting with this mission you can recruit skeletons (both axemen and archers) and apprentices. There are a couple of ways to approach this scenario:

-One strategy is to recruit two major forces and send one south to hold back the orcs at the bridge then send the other force northwest to take out that leader first. At that point, if you've had particularly good look on the the southern front you might want to go after that leader next, but more likely, you will want to recruit a few more units plus the units you used to kill the northwest leader and head south to kill the southwest orc leader.

-Another strategy is to recruit one large force and take out either the northwestern or southeastern orc leaders before the other orcish troops can catch up with you. Then you'll probably want to take out the southwestern orc leader. When I tried this I took heavier casualties and had less gold at the end of the scenario but it did work.

-If you've managed to acquire at least two shadows you can try slipping them behind enemy lines and assassinating one of the orc leaders. If you have at least 4 shadows your chances of success increase greatly. But after you kill two orc leaders the third will flee and this will end the scenario. You probably will want to prolong this as long as possible,however, to allow your forces to gain experience.

Return to Hal'al

Your first objective is to kill Drogan, if any other human unit dies before Drogan, you lose. A wraith, shadow, or spectre will probably start with Malin, between this and recalling another wraith or shadow, it should be easy to take out Drogan and discover, oops, the Hal'al townspeople hate you anyway. I found that wraiths and shadows were particularly effective since crossing the river doesn't slow them down at all. After you kill Drogan you need to escape across the river and to the west. So first you need to kill the orcs, which shouldn't be a problem, what might be a problem is that the Hal'al troops will continue to attack you as you flee. Another problem you will have is that if you flee you will lose all the villages you hold south of the river and will probably end up losing a bunch of gold but, oh well.

You don't HAVE to flee immediately. At least on the easiest setting it is possible to stay and completely defeat Dela and the Hal'al townspeople. But you face fairly strong opposition and will probably take enough casualties that it isn't really worth it. Also, you'll have to recruit enough units that you lose gold each turn, since there's no time limit, if you defeat the Hal'el townspeople after taking heavy enough casualties that you gain gold each turn, you can wait and make up the loss. It isn't really worth it, however, becuase you'll need your high level troops for the next mission.

A Small Favor Part One

As far as I can tell there's only one way to win this scenario and the requires having at least 4 shodows (or Nightgaunts). Recall these and send them to assassinate the leader at the enemy keep. (after first capturing as many villages as you feel like). Don't capture any enemy occupied villages, however, this will render your shadows visable. And keep Malin and Valk out of sight as well, or else the human leader will recruit an unbeatable number of reinforcements.

After you takeout the enemy leader, take out the rest of the human troops and capture the rest of the villages at your leisure. Get Malin to the enemy keep to recall forces you will want to use in the next mission. Wraiths and Shadows are particularly useful. Anything else is less useful; if you have a ghost about to level up it might be worth recalling; otherwise don't even bother with level one units.

A Small Favor Part Two

You start with the units you recalled at the end of the last mission, but you don't have to pay their upkeep for this scenario. (nor are there any villages, anyway). Since there are no villages, you won't be able to heal your units unless they have a drain attack. Darien Valk will operate separately with an army of allied undead. Hmmm, in all previous missions you commanded him directly... could this be foreshadowing?

Anyway, your first task is to kill Karres, who is a great mage and is put into one of the rooms at random. Each room is filled with mages of one variety or another. They won't leave the rooms of their own accord, although a couple of swordsman and other human units wander the halls, but these shouldn't be a big deal, the mages, however, can be quite deadly. Always make sure you have sufficient forces to wipe out at least three red or white mages before opening a door. (You open doors by placing a unit in front of the door) Actually, most room only has one or two mages in it, and they may be level one mages, but the room with Karres in it will also have two white mages. The invisibility of Shadows and Nightgaunts, in particular, is useful in wiping out mages. If you let the mages counter-attack, you will almost certainly lose one or more units.

After you kill Karres, head to the Northwest to grab the book. Then head to the Northeast to exit. You may mop up the remaining enemy forces for experience points, but to the northwest of the room right before the supply through which you exit there is one room you should probably just leave alone; it contains four silver mages and I don't think it's possible to take them out without casualties.