The Battle for Wesnoth Wiki - User contributions [en]

Black Eye story

2011-03-19T01:30:53Z

Kimnor: /* The End Of Peace */

=== The End Of Peace ===

Rahul I, Lord Protector of the Northern Alliance, concluded peace with enemy orcs during the 4th year of his leadership. He ended a 15-year war with Black-Eye Karun, ruler of the enemy orcs. A peace treaty between the Alliance and the orcs settled their territorial disputes.

So impressed was Rahul with the intelligence, prowess and leadership of Black-Eye Karun that he invited him to become a Lord Companion of the Northern Alliance. After much deliberation Black-Eye Karun decided to accept the offer. However, on the way to the city of Dwarven Doors - the headquarters of the Northern Alliance - Karun and his small group of bodyguards were attacked and slain to the last man. There were no survivors to confirm the incident, but it soon became believed among the orcs that the Northern Alliance had deliberately set up this ambush in order to break the unity of the orcs by slaying their strongest leader.

The peace treaty still held however, partially because the treaty - although arranged by the Northern Alliance - was between the local earls and the orcish tribes and didn't have any direct connection with the Northern Alliance. The other - and perhaps the main - reason why the treaty held was that with the death of the Black Eye, the unity of the orcs was shattered and they once again descended into inner squabbling. Thus the years that followed were relatively peaceful and prosperous - at least, for the humans.

In the thirteenth year of the Lord Protectorship of Howgarth III - the successor of Rahul I - tension began to rise between orcish tribes and human earldoms in the Northlands. Famine led humans to colonize some orcish lands and push orcs into desolated hill country. The few orcish tribes who had remained part of the Alliance, feeling the pressure, either left Alliance territory or revolted and were destroyed.

Retaliating, the orcs systematically slaughtered human colonies and villages on their lands. Then, Earl Lanbec'h - the most powerful human warlord of the North - determined to abolish the orcish menace raised an army and conferred leadership of it to his son-in-law Baron Albert.

Baron Albert personally led a small vanguard with the mission to establish a base inside orcish lands.

By nightfall his troops reached a mountainous region under the authority of orcish leader Kapou'e, the son of the Black-Eye.

=== The Human Army ===

=== Towards Mountains of Haag ===

=== The Siege of Barag Gor ===

=== Towards Harbor of Tirigaz ===

=== Black Flag ===

=== The Desert of Death ===

=== The Silent Forest ===

=== Shan Taum the Smug ===

=== Saving Inarix ===

=== Clash of Armies ===

=== Giving Some Back ===

=== A Dwarvish Stand ===

=== Back Home ===

=== Civil War ===

=== The Coward ===

=== Human Attack ===

=== Northern Alliance ===

=== Epilogue ===

[[Category:Campaigns]]
[[Category:Campaigns - Story Material]]

DelfadorsMemoirs

2011-03-07T20:56:00Z

Kimnor: /* Shadows */

==Story==

This campaign follows the adventures of Delfador, beginning from him leaving home as a newly qualified journeyman mage,
and leading up to him helping to bring peace to Wesnoth. It is set a couple of generations earlier than "Heir to the
Throne".

==Development==

Original developer: email to Josh Parsons, jp30 AT st-and.ac.uk.
Thread is at http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1293.

More recently, the campaign has been picked up and improved by 'tapik' - see [[CampaignDelfadorsMemoirs]].

==Campaign Strategy==

This section gives some advice on long-term strategy in this campaign.

''NOTE: plot spoilers''. In this campaign, you work with 6 different armies: your starting loyalist army, an undead army in the underworld, Kalenz and Chantal's elven armies, a dwarf army, and a loyalist army from Parthyn. Which armies are on the recall list varies from scenario to scenario. To an extent that means that long-term strategy doesn't matter, because you keep being given a clean slate; conversely, if you are short of vital units, you might have to go back 10 levels to fix it.

As the campaign progresses, money will become scarce and you'll recall ever smaller armies; don't spread experience among too many units, but strive to build a small core of elite troops. Useful long term strategies are:

* loyalists:
** '''mages''': for your starting loyalist army, mages are important. '''Get 2 white mages as early as you can'''. You face a lot of assassins in the early levels, and from level 7 onward there are a lot of undead. You'll have little use for red mages, one really is enough.
** '''heavy infantry''': not that useful, despite the numbers of undead. Too many of the levels are big wide open spaces, or have difficult terrain where your HI will founder, or you are given holy water or dwarves and so have better options. Nonetheless it is worth recruiting some HI in levels that do suit them, because you lose the ability to recruit them at some points but can still recall them.
** '''horsemen''': now these are useful - the early levels suit them well and you can employ them in numbers. Later you'll be mostly facing undead: paladins will be excellent, but it will be hard to level up any more knights. Make your paladins while you're still facing orcs, you'll hardly be able to make more than three (and probably employ only two).
* elves: standard mixture of elves is fine (although there are many undead, you get holy water to deal with them), except:
** '''sorcerors''': you get a druid free, and will want a second, but perhaps more importantly you want plenty of sorcerors as these are good against the sort of undead that you don't want to melee even with holy water (spectres).
* Delfador: perhaps the most important long run strategy in this campaign is to get Delfador to level 3 early, and near to reaching level 4 by the end of the loyalist levels (1-8). Delfador has to fight one level essentially on his own, and it helps a lot if he is at or near level 4 (the free heal from the level-up would be useful during that level).

==Walkthrough==

You should be familiar with the basics in [[WesnothManual]] -- this is a walkthrough, not an exposition of basic game mechanics.

Each scenario has an individual forum thread where you can provide feedback to the authors. You can find these [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=25554 here]. Feedback is useful as it helps the developers improve the campaign in future versions; and the posts by other players may contain advice or pointers beyond those in this walkthrough.

===Overture===

Just an introduction - sit back and enjoy the show.

===This Valley Belongs to Me===

Objectives: kill Grogor-Tuk, the enemy leader.

This one is tricky (at least at Great Mage - hard). The enemy has a lot of gold and sends a steady stream of units your way for the first day. In the south/centre is the easy bit - defend the river. Use your mage of light here to back up a few horsemen/spearmen to fend off the attackers.

The tricky bit is to the north - wolf riders cross the river to the north and come down through the woods. Some spearmen and mages in the woods works here, and there's a village in the woods to the north to anchor your defence on. Wolf riders don't benefit as much as your units do on the wooded tiles. Aim to give plenty of XP to at least one mage, so you can level him up here or early at the next level.

===The Road to Weldyn===

Objectives: kill Urthaka-Tan, the enemy leader.

You want quite a few horsemen here; it's a good opportunity to get lots of horsemen on your recall list (they are cheaper to recall than recruit later on). There are enough villages to fund recruiting or recalling 9 units and still have positive income throughout. You want at least half of your units to be horsemen: the enemy will have lots of archers who are easy prey in these open fields. You start with an archer and gain the ability to recruit more here, but you are better off recalling or recruiting mages, plus a couple of spearmen to play defence in the first night.

[Thrash: When I played it in 1.8.4, the enemy recruited very few archers, instead it was mainly melee units (trollchens, wolves and grunts) so archers and mages were very useful to me, horsemen less so.]

This level is dead easy to win because the enemy has a small keep, so his forces arrive spread out and not supporting each other. Use the day/night cycle; at night just fall back and, particularly on the first night, use the line of woods and castle tiles just west of your start. Your horsemen can go and take villages and make it back to fight at dawn on day 2. In the day, crush them with the horsemen and mages. You want to level up mages and horsemen.

Once you have crushed the enemy army, take the remaining villages and milk for XP - the early exit bonus is only +15/turn, and you should be able to get +14/turn while prolonging the level. You are heading for knights (for paladins later) and white mages, as per [[#Campaign_Strategy]].

===Leollyn===

Objectives: kill Hagha-Tan, and keep Leollyn alive.

You can ignore the ally in my experience; the enemy send a few units down that way, but the L3 mage and his L2 mage recruits are well able to handle them.

You want to recall at least one and preferably two white mages (there will be lots of assassins), and a horseman near leveling up. The rest of your recruit should be a mix of bowmen and spearmen, including one or two level 2 ones. March up to the ford to the north-west and build a defensive position for the night; keep the front line together with as few units as you can, as most will end up poisoned each turn; cycle them out and replace with others. Once day breaks, hopefully you have enough decent units left to mop up the enemy's first wave; your horseman is ideal to pick off any strong enemy units standing in the water.

Hopefully you can push over the river by afternoon on the second day. You can lure out the enemy leader and then run him down with your knight and Delfador.

[Thash: In my experience you want to finish this one early, by say turn 10, to get a big enough bonus for the next scenario, as it seem impossible with minimum starting gold.]

===Council in Weldyn===

Just story.

===Swamps of Illuven===

Objectives: Delfador must reach signpost in north-east before time runs out.

Spoiler: The protection charge is always 80% of your gold, and gets rid of the north-west enemy (the one not in the way of getting to the signpost). The other enemy player (the one blocking the signpost) gets a small gold bonus. So, you are losing 80% of your gold to get rid of around 40% of the enemy gold; hence, it's normally best to refuse to pay. At Easy, the deal is even worse, as the net effect is only about -25% of the enemy gold. Additionally, there is a gold bonus available if you don't pay and do defeat the NW enemy. It is not noted in the "Objectives"; instead, a treasure chest is shown on the map. Remember to take it.

Option 1, refusing to pay: If you don't pay the charge, you get to recruit a big army, get more XP, and finish quicker. You should be able to hold the central island while pushing a force from there to take out the NW leader. A balanced force would consist of couple of horsemen, 2 white mages, a couple of level 2s, a couple of level 1 mages (which are pretty good against footpads and poachers as they ignore their high defense ratings), and the rest spearmen as fodder to form your defensive line. It is vital to use Lionel's level-3 leadership to help your level-1 units fight better.

Option 2, paying the charge: The level is playable paying the charge if you are coming in with ~250 gold or more. Although it gives the AI a big lead in gold, you have halved the recruit rate for the AIs and ensured that they are all on the far side of the level; the AI's forces don't concentrate so well and your small force can evade them at night. You may prefer this route if you prefer a challenging small-army scouting battle rather than a big army battle. You can win by starting with as little as two raw recruit Spearman and a recalled horseman, if you take some villages so that you can recall some more units later.

===Night in the Swamp===

Objective: survive 12 turns.

It is hard to get an early exit bonus here, and you don't need it, so just take the opportunity to level up some units. Grab some heavy infantry and mages, and perhaps a knight - see [[#Campaign Strategy]].

You can put a generator out of action by landing any level 2 or better mage on it; the level will end when there are no skeletons left. At easy, it appears that there is only one generator - you can storm it and get an early exit bonus if you find the next level easier that way, but I think leveling up units is more useful here.

===Ur-Thorodor===

Objectives: get Delfador into the wose castle. No early exit bonus.

The main hazard here is the gryphons - they will attack as you cross the water. Be careful with Lionel and Delfador; you may need to use fodder to lure the gryphons and then blast them. Recall a red mage, a good damage sink (a knight will do), a healer, and perhaps another mage and a fodder unit. Cross straight away, and don't get bogged down on the other side - blast a hole with your mages and get Delfador into the castle asap. You are not likely to win a long fight. Remember that Lionel's leadership helps mages too.

===Houses of the Dead===

Objective: find the Staff and get Delfador to the north signpost within 64 turns.

Explore to your north-west first - there is one village in that direction. To your north is an impassable barrier behind those mountains, so next turn back and work around the level anti-clockwise. No need to climb through the mountains: if you stick to the "road" you won't miss anything. If you pay attention to what you're told, you'll learn about a secret passage that *will* make life easier. But this scenario is pretty straightforward either way.

The friends you find will try to help, but usually throw their, uh, existences away against the skeletons quite quickly; at least they serve as distraction. Any survivors will be available for recall on the next level, one even for free -- but that's not much of a benefit, so don't worry too much.

Don't exit until turn 64, as there is no early exit bonus but you should have a good income. Waiting gives you more gold for the next scenario (1.8.0).

===The Gate Between Worlds===

* Objectives: kill Iliah-Malal
* Starting units: Delfador and a surviving Ghost, Ghoul or advancement from the previous scenario

You get to recruit Ghosts and Ghouls here, your allies of the last level. Money should be no problem.

Players have used two options with success:

Option 1, attack with Ghouls. Backed by Delfador's leadership, ghouls can actually do a lot of damage. But he can't be everywhere, and anyway the ghouls will probably perish quickly. That's alright, as long as you manage to poison most enemies. There's not enough villages for your opponent to heal his army, and if you give battle on your shore of the swamp they won't get anywhere quickly. Ghosts can then finish the poisoned enemies.

Option 2, leader assassination with Ghosts. Send 8 Ghosts around the flanks of the enemy to converge on Iliah-Malal, surrounding and killing him, albeit slowly. Send a Ghoul-heavy force supported by Delfador and a couple of Ghosts up the middle to distract the majority of the enemy forces. Delfador should be cautious; he is only there to distract, and the Dark Adepts and Thugs pack enough of a punch to kill him if you are not careful.

Note: You will be able to recall this undead force in a later scenario, but this may not be very useful, so you don't have to worry about leveling up units for later levels.

===Wasteland===

Objectives: kill Tish Golub

Straightforward scenario, albeit the enemy can recruit L2 units and you have only raw Elven recruits. The walk north to the Elven castle is simple. Most of the fighting takes place in the woods that you can see to your west, so elven archers are good here. Also grab a scout to steal all your ally's villages, otherwise she will keep recruiting L2 units and stealing your XP. Definitely recruit 1 or 2 shamans, as you would like to have a sorcerer early in the next level.

===Terror at the Ford of Parthyn===

Objectives: defeat both the orc and undead leaders.

'''Conservative strategy:'''
As soon as you spot the ford guard, it will come under your control. Using a scout, you can get there in time for the humans to man the walls. Actually, the walls are one huge keep, so Delfador can recruit directly into the fortifications and fill the gaps. You should be able to fend off the first wave of attackers, the more so as the baddies will conveniently arrive at daybreak. The mages, on the other hand, won't get across the river until the fun is mostly over; recall your own healers. You should leave two mages on the other shore anyway, in order to deal with any ghosts that try to get at the villages down there.

'''Play-it-safe strategy:'''
Abandon the northern shore; run to the south castle (without recruiting at all) and play defensive through the first wave of enemies. The orcs and undead are hostile to each other, so this gives them ample opportunity to fight amongst themselves. ''Needs investigation and comments.''

'''Aggressive strategy:'''
Recruit/Recall an army and send them west to deal with the orcs; only one scout should head south and find the guards, which should then retreat to the sourthern castle. The downside is that this approach will lead to more night-time engagements; dont try this if you don't have several lvl-2 elves to begin with. The benefit is that you'll get more experience on the units that need it most: your elves and the human mages. The latter will stay with your host, and often be automatically recalled for free.

You will find that some villages in the north of the map contain ambushes. Two villages near the ford contain allied troops; releasing these early would be a big help to defending the south castle.

===The Return of Trouble===

Objectives: defeat all enemy leaders.

This level has a no-breathing-room start - the east enemy is almost on top of you and has as much gold as you (at Great Mage). The mountains and starting camp are poor terrain for you as that terrain is better for orcs; cross your forces into the woods opposite where you have advantages in defence and movement.

Although you can recruit "raw" L2 units here, don't feel you need to recruit too many of them; the large number of enemy L2s attacking mean that it is hard to keep units in the front line alive, and so recruiting good numbers of units matters here. Recruiting a few druids and captains and recruiting L1 units for the bulk of the army works well.

The ally spends his forces quickly and his leader will die early, but you aren't required to keep him alive, so don't worry about him; when he dies it is even an advantage as it stops encouraging the orcs to go through the woods south of your position.

At lower skills, aim to knock out the east enemy early. His right flank is open but rests on the mountains, which is bad terrain for you - if you try to go around that way he can easily shift forces to meet you. Instead you can approach close to his keep through the woods; this, his left flank, usually isn't open but the AI isn't smart about keeping a proper line here. At Great Mage, you may not have the forces to spare to take him out (if you can even make an opening - he has plenty of units); instead slow him with a shaman when he pops out of his keep to attack and block him from getting back to recruit. Note: With the right recruits it is possible to snipe the east leader on the second turn (but rather difficult and low probability).

You should aim to maintain a line along the north part of the woods; the main line is down the west side of the woods for a few tiles and this is where Kalenz should be; and a line back east inside the wood for your left flank, to catch enemy units coming at you through the woods. Hold out in the woods for 2 days and the storm will eventually subside; you will probably have heavy losses but your survivors should all be L3 or close to it by the end. You can then seize villages and take out the enemy commanders.

===Shadows===

Objectives: defeat all enemy leaders.

You start with your Kalenz force, and get back your Delfador force during the scenario (he arrives in the SE). Grab all three holy waters near the start, but you should then move all your elven forces in one direction, head west to take out the west lich. The forest slows up most of the undead and so means that the undead converging from the other two camps won't catch you before you overwhelm and eliminate the enemy leader that you target. Because you are facing some L1 and L2 troops here, don't feel that you need to give the holy water to L3 units - a mix of L1 and L2 units is ideal and they should level all the way to L3 during the level. Recall any Elven sorcerers or shaman with good XP, and shaman are good extra recruits at the start, again to level to sorcerers.

Once you have knocked out the NW leader, your elven force should head south to take out the south leader, and Delfador's force can head north to take out the NE leader. Lots of the undead forces will spend the whole level floundering around in the north woods around your start camp, chasing but never catching you up.

===Save the King===

Objectives: kill Zorlan, and (at Mage and above) kill all the enemy leaders; and keep Garard alive until that is done.

You don't have to worry about Garard - even at Great Mage, he is more than strong enough to defeat the two southern enemies and his forces significantly help defeat Zorlan (1.8.0). You get a big automatic recall of your white mages, Chantal, and a shock trooper and Kalenz; that's plenty to win with, but recruit some new elves as it gives you some units to give XP to, fodder to face the trolls with, and they are handy to take out the SW enemy faster (at Mage and above). An elven sorcerer is a good recall, but 1 is enough.

Zorlan should be simple; some of his units tangle with Garard's units in the river, so you should meet little opposition getting to his camp - which can be easily crushed with your mages. The onset of trolls at around first watch is the only dangerous moment, but once they have attacked, your mages and high level units can wipe them out mostly in one round. Then send Delfador and a couple of other units to take out the troll leader, and send some elves south with Kalenz to help Garard clean up and then take out the SW leader. Garard usually kills the SE leader by himself.

===Dark Sky Over Weldyn===

Just story.

===A New Ally===

Objectives: kill Gruv-Malal; keep Ulrek and Relgorn alive.

Recruit and recall some mages - get a few L1s and you should be able to level up a couple by the end of the level. Move to Ulrek's keep - provided you have some units there by second watch, there is no danger of him being defeated. The dwarves wear down the undead and your mages get to clean up and take the XP.

===The Portal of Doom===

Objectives: close the portal and get your units out via the mine shaft where you start.

Heavy-infantry are too slow on the ice. Similarly it is best to recall quick mages. Your main force should be dwarf warriors, with a few white mages or quick mages to weaken enemy units and to deal with nightgaunts and the like. A knight (even better, a paladin) would also be useful here, due to the speed and for finishing off enemy units when the dwarves can't reach.

Don't worry about the villages to the north - Illah-Malal appears on day 2 at the north castle, so scouting units sent north would probably get killed. You can defend at your camp to defeat the first wave of undead, then march over the ice to close the portal; the northern undead will come to you. You will finish with deep negative gold but it doesn't matter.

===Showdown in the Northern Swamp===

* Objectives: kill all enemy leaders.
* Other: must kill Illah-Malal with Delfador.

There is lots of holy water at the start, and you might struggle to have enough units to give it to. You get control of Lionel on turn 3 (plus a castle of rubbish L1 recruits), so you don't have to take villages off of him. I suggest give Lionel and Kalenz a holy water each and the third to a good L2 melee unit or knight. Your other 4 recalls could be 2 white mages, a steelclad and a paladin (or a knight close to leveling - as it is an open level).

A good strategy here is to strike straight north and seize the south end of the bridge. The NE necromancer recruits a lot of dark adepts, and you will have to run a long way during the night to outrun them if you don't bottle them up at the crossing. Once you hold the bridge, a good melee unit and a white mage, plus some of the ally's archers, can easily hold off the NE forces. The NW enemies attack during the first night, and the main tricky bit is dealing with the nightgaunts and spectres here - just keep L2 and L3 melee units in the front line to meet the attack, then clean up with your mages. The SW enemy's units are slower and arrive on day 2; so by moving to the bridge, you've split the enemy attack and can crush each in turn.

===Prince of Wesnoth===

Objectives: kill an enemy commander.

Do not attempt to cross into the central woods; it seems like a tempting spot to fight from, but you will struggle to maximise your recruitment and still get all your units across into it, because the southern enemy camp is close to your line of advance. Instead, abandon all your villages and the rest of the level to the enemy and just defend the SW corner. Elves along the edge of the woods should be able to hold out and wear through the enemy. The number of L2 units, and the mages that the enemy recruit, mean that you will take casualties; but you will be killing a lot and scoring plenty of XP. A general mix of level 1, 2 and 3 units works well here; use the best units to hold tiles that can be attacked from several directions, which will deter the enemy from attacking them.

Once the initial wave of enemies is spent, mop up and proceed swiftly through the central woods and jump into an enemy camp to kill the general. You don't have to have much gold for the next level, but will want high-level units, so take time here to level some up if you don't have enough.

===Clash at the Manor===

Objectives: kill the enemy commander; prevent any enemies escaping via the roads.

As there are two roads and two signposts, you need to watch both routes. You can break your forces in two or just send one unit to keep an eye on the other route. If you wait at the edge of your forest, almost all the forces should come to you (Dragoons and Cavalry will try to escape instead), and you'll have the terrain advantage. Just be ready to counter anyone trying to make a run for it. You start with Chantal, and a second druid or shyde would be a good idea so that you have a healer and someone to entangle any royal guards. The rest of your recalls should be top melee units (e.g., champions and avengers.) After the assault is broken, the mopping up operation is just to kill the sitting duck leader.

The second phase of the level is a search; just visit all the tiles outside the cave area north of the mansion.

[Thrash: I don't think just sending a single unit to cover one route will work. If enemy sends a couple riders that way, you won't catch them.]

===Face of the Enemy===

Objectives: kill the enemy commander.

Last level, so you don't have to worry about losses or leveling up; recall some sorcerers and a decent melee unit to take the holy water. The enemy recruits few units, so you don't have to cover all the passageways; just advance as a group by the shortest route to the keep, and keep side passages covered (the enemy sometimes uses nightgaunts to ambush and slip in through any gaps). Beware of putting Delfador in front, as the enemy can use Banebows like walking corpses for suicide attacks against him.

This scenario is too easy up to at least 1.8.4, so just play conservatively and coast to victory.

== Old Version ==

Before its inclusion as a mainline campaign, Delfador's Memoirs was distributed as a separate add-on.

=== Installation notes ===

Delfador's Memoirs is distributed as a tarball (.tar.gz), containing all sources for the campaign.
The tarball is built with automake. To install, unpack it, change into the directory delfadors-memoirs-(version) and
run (as root) "./configure && make && make install"

If you can't install DM this way, then you may install download and install it from the campaign server (you will need wesnoth 0.8.5 or a current CVS version to do this).

=== Download ===

Version 0.1: (3 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth = 0.7.7
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/memoirs-0.1.tar.gz

Version 0.2: (7 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth = 0.7.9
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.2.tar.gz
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.2.zip

Version 0.3: (9 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.7.11 (=0.7.11 for the tarball)
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.3.tar.gz
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.3.zip

Version 0.4: (10 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.7.11, <= 0.8.3
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.4.tar.gz
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.4.zip

Version 0.5: (10 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.8.4, <= 0.8.7
* http://weka.ucdavis.edu/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.5.tar.gz

Version 0.5.1: (10 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.8.4, <= 0.8.7
* http://weka.ucdavis.edu/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.5.1.tar.gz

Version 0.5.2: (10 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.8.9
* http://weka.ucdavis.edu/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.5.2.tar.gz

== See Also ==

* [[Mainline Campaigns]]

[[Category:Campaigns - Walkthroughs]]

DelfadorsMemoirs

2011-03-07T20:33:17Z

Kimnor: /* The Return of Trouble */

==Story==

This campaign follows the adventures of Delfador, beginning from him leaving home as a newly qualified journeyman mage,
and leading up to him helping to bring peace to Wesnoth. It is set a couple of generations earlier than "Heir to the
Throne".

==Development==

Original developer: email to Josh Parsons, jp30 AT st-and.ac.uk.
Thread is at http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1293.

More recently, the campaign has been picked up and improved by 'tapik' - see [[CampaignDelfadorsMemoirs]].

==Campaign Strategy==

This section gives some advice on long-term strategy in this campaign.

''NOTE: plot spoilers''. In this campaign, you work with 6 different armies: your starting loyalist army, an undead army in the underworld, Kalenz and Chantal's elven armies, a dwarf army, and a loyalist army from Parthyn. Which armies are on the recall list varies from scenario to scenario. To an extent that means that long-term strategy doesn't matter, because you keep being given a clean slate; conversely, if you are short of vital units, you might have to go back 10 levels to fix it.

As the campaign progresses, money will become scarce and you'll recall ever smaller armies; don't spread experience among too many units, but strive to build a small core of elite troops. Useful long term strategies are:

* loyalists:
** '''mages''': for your starting loyalist army, mages are important. '''Get 2 white mages as early as you can'''. You face a lot of assassins in the early levels, and from level 7 onward there are a lot of undead. You'll have little use for red mages, one really is enough.
** '''heavy infantry''': not that useful, despite the numbers of undead. Too many of the levels are big wide open spaces, or have difficult terrain where your HI will founder, or you are given holy water or dwarves and so have better options. Nonetheless it is worth recruiting some HI in levels that do suit them, because you lose the ability to recruit them at some points but can still recall them.
** '''horsemen''': now these are useful - the early levels suit them well and you can employ them in numbers. Later you'll be mostly facing undead: paladins will be excellent, but it will be hard to level up any more knights. Make your paladins while you're still facing orcs, you'll hardly be able to make more than three (and probably employ only two).
* elves: standard mixture of elves is fine (although there are many undead, you get holy water to deal with them), except:
** '''sorcerors''': you get a druid free, and will want a second, but perhaps more importantly you want plenty of sorcerors as these are good against the sort of undead that you don't want to melee even with holy water (spectres).
* Delfador: perhaps the most important long run strategy in this campaign is to get Delfador to level 3 early, and near to reaching level 4 by the end of the loyalist levels (1-8). Delfador has to fight one level essentially on his own, and it helps a lot if he is at or near level 4 (the free heal from the level-up would be useful during that level).

==Walkthrough==

You should be familiar with the basics in [[WesnothManual]] -- this is a walkthrough, not an exposition of basic game mechanics.

Each scenario has an individual forum thread where you can provide feedback to the authors. You can find these [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=25554 here]. Feedback is useful as it helps the developers improve the campaign in future versions; and the posts by other players may contain advice or pointers beyond those in this walkthrough.

===Overture===

Just an introduction - sit back and enjoy the show.

===This Valley Belongs to Me===

Objectives: kill Grogor-Tuk, the enemy leader.

This one is tricky (at least at Great Mage - hard). The enemy has a lot of gold and sends a steady stream of units your way for the first day. In the south/centre is the easy bit - defend the river. Use your mage of light here to back up a few horsemen/spearmen to fend off the attackers.

The tricky bit is to the north - wolf riders cross the river to the north and come down through the woods. Some spearmen and mages in the woods works here, and there's a village in the woods to the north to anchor your defence on. Wolf riders don't benefit as much as your units do on the wooded tiles. Aim to give plenty of XP to at least one mage, so you can level him up here or early at the next level.

===The Road to Weldyn===

Objectives: kill Urthaka-Tan, the enemy leader.

You want quite a few horsemen here; it's a good opportunity to get lots of horsemen on your recall list (they are cheaper to recall than recruit later on). There are enough villages to fund recruiting or recalling 9 units and still have positive income throughout. You want at least half of your units to be horsemen: the enemy will have lots of archers who are easy prey in these open fields. You start with an archer and gain the ability to recruit more here, but you are better off recalling or recruiting mages, plus a couple of spearmen to play defence in the first night.

[Thrash: When I played it in 1.8.4, the enemy recruited very few archers, instead it was mainly melee units (trollchens, wolves and grunts) so archers and mages were very useful to me, horsemen less so.]

This level is dead easy to win because the enemy has a small keep, so his forces arrive spread out and not supporting each other. Use the day/night cycle; at night just fall back and, particularly on the first night, use the line of woods and castle tiles just west of your start. Your horsemen can go and take villages and make it back to fight at dawn on day 2. In the day, crush them with the horsemen and mages. You want to level up mages and horsemen.

Once you have crushed the enemy army, take the remaining villages and milk for XP - the early exit bonus is only +15/turn, and you should be able to get +14/turn while prolonging the level. You are heading for knights (for paladins later) and white mages, as per [[#Campaign_Strategy]].

===Leollyn===

Objectives: kill Hagha-Tan, and keep Leollyn alive.

You can ignore the ally in my experience; the enemy send a few units down that way, but the L3 mage and his L2 mage recruits are well able to handle them.

You want to recall at least one and preferably two white mages (there will be lots of assassins), and a horseman near leveling up. The rest of your recruit should be a mix of bowmen and spearmen, including one or two level 2 ones. March up to the ford to the north-west and build a defensive position for the night; keep the front line together with as few units as you can, as most will end up poisoned each turn; cycle them out and replace with others. Once day breaks, hopefully you have enough decent units left to mop up the enemy's first wave; your horseman is ideal to pick off any strong enemy units standing in the water.

Hopefully you can push over the river by afternoon on the second day. You can lure out the enemy leader and then run him down with your knight and Delfador.

[Thash: In my experience you want to finish this one early, by say turn 10, to get a big enough bonus for the next scenario, as it seem impossible with minimum starting gold.]

===Council in Weldyn===

Just story.

===Swamps of Illuven===

Objectives: Delfador must reach signpost in north-east before time runs out.

Spoiler: The protection charge is always 80% of your gold, and gets rid of the north-west enemy (the one not in the way of getting to the signpost). The other enemy player (the one blocking the signpost) gets a small gold bonus. So, you are losing 80% of your gold to get rid of around 40% of the enemy gold; hence, it's normally best to refuse to pay. At Easy, the deal is even worse, as the net effect is only about -25% of the enemy gold. Additionally, there is a gold bonus available if you don't pay and do defeat the NW enemy. It is not noted in the "Objectives"; instead, a treasure chest is shown on the map. Remember to take it.

Option 1, refusing to pay: If you don't pay the charge, you get to recruit a big army, get more XP, and finish quicker. You should be able to hold the central island while pushing a force from there to take out the NW leader. A balanced force would consist of couple of horsemen, 2 white mages, a couple of level 2s, a couple of level 1 mages (which are pretty good against footpads and poachers as they ignore their high defense ratings), and the rest spearmen as fodder to form your defensive line. It is vital to use Lionel's level-3 leadership to help your level-1 units fight better.

Option 2, paying the charge: The level is playable paying the charge if you are coming in with ~250 gold or more. Although it gives the AI a big lead in gold, you have halved the recruit rate for the AIs and ensured that they are all on the far side of the level; the AI's forces don't concentrate so well and your small force can evade them at night. You may prefer this route if you prefer a challenging small-army scouting battle rather than a big army battle. You can win by starting with as little as two raw recruit Spearman and a recalled horseman, if you take some villages so that you can recall some more units later.

===Night in the Swamp===

Objective: survive 12 turns.

It is hard to get an early exit bonus here, and you don't need it, so just take the opportunity to level up some units. Grab some heavy infantry and mages, and perhaps a knight - see [[#Campaign Strategy]].

You can put a generator out of action by landing any level 2 or better mage on it; the level will end when there are no skeletons left. At easy, it appears that there is only one generator - you can storm it and get an early exit bonus if you find the next level easier that way, but I think leveling up units is more useful here.

===Ur-Thorodor===

Objectives: get Delfador into the wose castle. No early exit bonus.

The main hazard here is the gryphons - they will attack as you cross the water. Be careful with Lionel and Delfador; you may need to use fodder to lure the gryphons and then blast them. Recall a red mage, a good damage sink (a knight will do), a healer, and perhaps another mage and a fodder unit. Cross straight away, and don't get bogged down on the other side - blast a hole with your mages and get Delfador into the castle asap. You are not likely to win a long fight. Remember that Lionel's leadership helps mages too.

===Houses of the Dead===

Objective: find the Staff and get Delfador to the north signpost within 64 turns.

Explore to your north-west first - there is one village in that direction. To your north is an impassable barrier behind those mountains, so next turn back and work around the level anti-clockwise. No need to climb through the mountains: if you stick to the "road" you won't miss anything. If you pay attention to what you're told, you'll learn about a secret passage that *will* make life easier. But this scenario is pretty straightforward either way.

The friends you find will try to help, but usually throw their, uh, existences away against the skeletons quite quickly; at least they serve as distraction. Any survivors will be available for recall on the next level, one even for free -- but that's not much of a benefit, so don't worry too much.

Don't exit until turn 64, as there is no early exit bonus but you should have a good income. Waiting gives you more gold for the next scenario (1.8.0).

===The Gate Between Worlds===

* Objectives: kill Iliah-Malal
* Starting units: Delfador and a surviving Ghost, Ghoul or advancement from the previous scenario

You get to recruit Ghosts and Ghouls here, your allies of the last level. Money should be no problem.

Players have used two options with success:

Option 1, attack with Ghouls. Backed by Delfador's leadership, ghouls can actually do a lot of damage. But he can't be everywhere, and anyway the ghouls will probably perish quickly. That's alright, as long as you manage to poison most enemies. There's not enough villages for your opponent to heal his army, and if you give battle on your shore of the swamp they won't get anywhere quickly. Ghosts can then finish the poisoned enemies.

Option 2, leader assassination with Ghosts. Send 8 Ghosts around the flanks of the enemy to converge on Iliah-Malal, surrounding and killing him, albeit slowly. Send a Ghoul-heavy force supported by Delfador and a couple of Ghosts up the middle to distract the majority of the enemy forces. Delfador should be cautious; he is only there to distract, and the Dark Adepts and Thugs pack enough of a punch to kill him if you are not careful.

Note: You will be able to recall this undead force in a later scenario, but this may not be very useful, so you don't have to worry about leveling up units for later levels.

===Wasteland===

Objectives: kill Tish Golub

Straightforward scenario, albeit the enemy can recruit L2 units and you have only raw Elven recruits. The walk north to the Elven castle is simple. Most of the fighting takes place in the woods that you can see to your west, so elven archers are good here. Also grab a scout to steal all your ally's villages, otherwise she will keep recruiting L2 units and stealing your XP. Definitely recruit 1 or 2 shamans, as you would like to have a sorcerer early in the next level.

===Terror at the Ford of Parthyn===

Objectives: defeat both the orc and undead leaders.

'''Conservative strategy:'''
As soon as you spot the ford guard, it will come under your control. Using a scout, you can get there in time for the humans to man the walls. Actually, the walls are one huge keep, so Delfador can recruit directly into the fortifications and fill the gaps. You should be able to fend off the first wave of attackers, the more so as the baddies will conveniently arrive at daybreak. The mages, on the other hand, won't get across the river until the fun is mostly over; recall your own healers. You should leave two mages on the other shore anyway, in order to deal with any ghosts that try to get at the villages down there.

'''Play-it-safe strategy:'''
Abandon the northern shore; run to the south castle (without recruiting at all) and play defensive through the first wave of enemies. The orcs and undead are hostile to each other, so this gives them ample opportunity to fight amongst themselves. ''Needs investigation and comments.''

'''Aggressive strategy:'''
Recruit/Recall an army and send them west to deal with the orcs; only one scout should head south and find the guards, which should then retreat to the sourthern castle. The downside is that this approach will lead to more night-time engagements; dont try this if you don't have several lvl-2 elves to begin with. The benefit is that you'll get more experience on the units that need it most: your elves and the human mages. The latter will stay with your host, and often be automatically recalled for free.

You will find that some villages in the north of the map contain ambushes. Two villages near the ford contain allied troops; releasing these early would be a big help to defending the south castle.

===The Return of Trouble===

Objectives: defeat all enemy leaders.

This level has a no-breathing-room start - the east enemy is almost on top of you and has as much gold as you (at Great Mage). The mountains and starting camp are poor terrain for you as that terrain is better for orcs; cross your forces into the woods opposite where you have advantages in defence and movement.

Although you can recruit "raw" L2 units here, don't feel you need to recruit too many of them; the large number of enemy L2s attacking mean that it is hard to keep units in the front line alive, and so recruiting good numbers of units matters here. Recruiting a few druids and captains and recruiting L1 units for the bulk of the army works well.

The ally spends his forces quickly and his leader will die early, but you aren't required to keep him alive, so don't worry about him; when he dies it is even an advantage as it stops encouraging the orcs to go through the woods south of your position.

At lower skills, aim to knock out the east enemy early. His right flank is open but rests on the mountains, which is bad terrain for you - if you try to go around that way he can easily shift forces to meet you. Instead you can approach close to his keep through the woods; this, his left flank, usually isn't open but the AI isn't smart about keeping a proper line here. At Great Mage, you may not have the forces to spare to take him out (if you can even make an opening - he has plenty of units); instead slow him with a shaman when he pops out of his keep to attack and block him from getting back to recruit. Note: With the right recruits it is possible to snipe the east leader on the second turn (but rather difficult and low probability).

You should aim to maintain a line along the north part of the woods; the main line is down the west side of the woods for a few tiles and this is where Kalenz should be; and a line back east inside the wood for your left flank, to catch enemy units coming at you through the woods. Hold out in the woods for 2 days and the storm will eventually subside; you will probably have heavy losses but your survivors should all be L3 or close to it by the end. You can then seize villages and take out the enemy commanders.

===Shadows===

Objectives: defeat all enemy leaders.

You start with your Kalenz force, and get back your Delfador force during the scenario (he arrives in the SE). Grab all three holy waters near the start, but you should then move all your elven forces in one direction, head west to take out the west lich. The forest slows up most of the undead and so means that the undead converging from the other two camps won't catch you before you overwhelm and eliminate the enemy leader that you target. Because you are facing some L1 and L2 troops here, don't feel that you need to give the holy water to L3 units - a mix of L1 and L2 units is ideal and they should level all the way to L3 during the level. Recall any Elven sorcerers or shaman with good XP, and shaman are good extra recruits at the start, again to level to sorcerers.

Once you have knocked out the NW leader, you elven force should head south to take out the south leader, and Delfador's force can head north to take out the NE leader. Lots of the undead forces will spend the whole level floundering around in the north woods around your start camp, chasing but never catching you up.

===Save the King===

Objectives: kill Zorlan, and (at Mage and above) kill all the enemy leaders; and keep Garard alive until that is done.

You don't have to worry about Garard - even at Great Mage, he is more than strong enough to defeat the two southern enemies and his forces significantly help defeat Zorlan (1.8.0). You get a big automatic recall of your white mages, Chantal, and a shock trooper and Kalenz; that's plenty to win with, but recruit some new elves as it gives you some units to give XP to, fodder to face the trolls with, and they are handy to take out the SW enemy faster (at Mage and above). An elven sorcerer is a good recall, but 1 is enough.

Zorlan should be simple; some of his units tangle with Garard's units in the river, so you should meet little opposition getting to his camp - which can be easily crushed with your mages. The onset of trolls at around first watch is the only dangerous moment, but once they have attacked, your mages and high level units can wipe them out mostly in one round. Then send Delfador and a couple of other units to take out the troll leader, and send some elves south with Kalenz to help Garard clean up and then take out the SW leader. Garard usually kills the SE leader by himself.

===Dark Sky Over Weldyn===

Just story.

===A New Ally===

Objectives: kill Gruv-Malal; keep Ulrek and Relgorn alive.

Recruit and recall some mages - get a few L1s and you should be able to level up a couple by the end of the level. Move to Ulrek's keep - provided you have some units there by second watch, there is no danger of him being defeated. The dwarves wear down the undead and your mages get to clean up and take the XP.

===The Portal of Doom===

Objectives: close the portal and get your units out via the mine shaft where you start.

Heavy-infantry are too slow on the ice. Similarly it is best to recall quick mages. Your main force should be dwarf warriors, with a few white mages or quick mages to weaken enemy units and to deal with nightgaunts and the like. A knight (even better, a paladin) would also be useful here, due to the speed and for finishing off enemy units when the dwarves can't reach.

Don't worry about the villages to the north - Illah-Malal appears on day 2 at the north castle, so scouting units sent north would probably get killed. You can defend at your camp to defeat the first wave of undead, then march over the ice to close the portal; the northern undead will come to you. You will finish with deep negative gold but it doesn't matter.

===Showdown in the Northern Swamp===

* Objectives: kill all enemy leaders.
* Other: must kill Illah-Malal with Delfador.

There is lots of holy water at the start, and you might struggle to have enough units to give it to. You get control of Lionel on turn 3 (plus a castle of rubbish L1 recruits), so you don't have to take villages off of him. I suggest give Lionel and Kalenz a holy water each and the third to a good L2 melee unit or knight. Your other 4 recalls could be 2 white mages, a steelclad and a paladin (or a knight close to leveling - as it is an open level).

A good strategy here is to strike straight north and seize the south end of the bridge. The NE necromancer recruits a lot of dark adepts, and you will have to run a long way during the night to outrun them if you don't bottle them up at the crossing. Once you hold the bridge, a good melee unit and a white mage, plus some of the ally's archers, can easily hold off the NE forces. The NW enemies attack during the first night, and the main tricky bit is dealing with the nightgaunts and spectres here - just keep L2 and L3 melee units in the front line to meet the attack, then clean up with your mages. The SW enemy's units are slower and arrive on day 2; so by moving to the bridge, you've split the enemy attack and can crush each in turn.

===Prince of Wesnoth===

Objectives: kill an enemy commander.

Do not attempt to cross into the central woods; it seems like a tempting spot to fight from, but you will struggle to maximise your recruitment and still get all your units across into it, because the southern enemy camp is close to your line of advance. Instead, abandon all your villages and the rest of the level to the enemy and just defend the SW corner. Elves along the edge of the woods should be able to hold out and wear through the enemy. The number of L2 units, and the mages that the enemy recruit, mean that you will take casualties; but you will be killing a lot and scoring plenty of XP. A general mix of level 1, 2 and 3 units works well here; use the best units to hold tiles that can be attacked from several directions, which will deter the enemy from attacking them.

Once the initial wave of enemies is spent, mop up and proceed swiftly through the central woods and jump into an enemy camp to kill the general. You don't have to have much gold for the next level, but will want high-level units, so take time here to level some up if you don't have enough.

===Clash at the Manor===

Objectives: kill the enemy commander; prevent any enemies escaping via the roads.

As there are two roads and two signposts, you need to watch both routes. You can break your forces in two or just send one unit to keep an eye on the other route. If you wait at the edge of your forest, almost all the forces should come to you (Dragoons and Cavalry will try to escape instead), and you'll have the terrain advantage. Just be ready to counter anyone trying to make a run for it. You start with Chantal, and a second druid or shyde would be a good idea so that you have a healer and someone to entangle any royal guards. The rest of your recalls should be top melee units (e.g., champions and avengers.) After the assault is broken, the mopping up operation is just to kill the sitting duck leader.

The second phase of the level is a search; just visit all the tiles outside the cave area north of the mansion.

[Thrash: I don't think just sending a single unit to cover one route will work. If enemy sends a couple riders that way, you won't catch them.]

===Face of the Enemy===

Objectives: kill the enemy commander.

Last level, so you don't have to worry about losses or leveling up; recall some sorcerers and a decent melee unit to take the holy water. The enemy recruits few units, so you don't have to cover all the passageways; just advance as a group by the shortest route to the keep, and keep side passages covered (the enemy sometimes uses nightgaunts to ambush and slip in through any gaps). Beware of putting Delfador in front, as the enemy can use Banebows like walking corpses for suicide attacks against him.

This scenario is too easy up to at least 1.8.4, so just play conservatively and coast to victory.

== Old Version ==

Before its inclusion as a mainline campaign, Delfador's Memoirs was distributed as a separate add-on.

=== Installation notes ===

Delfador's Memoirs is distributed as a tarball (.tar.gz), containing all sources for the campaign.
The tarball is built with automake. To install, unpack it, change into the directory delfadors-memoirs-(version) and
run (as root) "./configure && make && make install"

If you can't install DM this way, then you may install download and install it from the campaign server (you will need wesnoth 0.8.5 or a current CVS version to do this).

=== Download ===

Version 0.1: (3 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth = 0.7.7
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/memoirs-0.1.tar.gz

Version 0.2: (7 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth = 0.7.9
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.2.tar.gz
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.2.zip

Version 0.3: (9 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.7.11 (=0.7.11 for the tarball)
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.3.tar.gz
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.3.zip

Version 0.4: (10 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.7.11, <= 0.8.3
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.4.tar.gz
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.4.zip

Version 0.5: (10 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.8.4, <= 0.8.7
* http://weka.ucdavis.edu/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.5.tar.gz

Version 0.5.1: (10 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.8.4, <= 0.8.7
* http://weka.ucdavis.edu/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.5.1.tar.gz

Version 0.5.2: (10 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.8.9
* http://weka.ucdavis.edu/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.5.2.tar.gz

== See Also ==

* [[Mainline Campaigns]]

[[Category:Campaigns - Walkthroughs]]

DescentIntoDarkness

2011-02-22T01:05:40Z

Kimnor: /* Alone at Last */

=== Saving Parthyn ===
* Objectives: Defend the fort for two nights
* Lose if: Malin Keshar or Drogan die
* Turns: 15
* Starting units: Malin Keshar, two Spearmen and a Bowman
You'll start the battle with three human soldiers. Recruit a lot of Walking Corpses.

Block the ford. Try to take advantage of terrain and time of day. You can take the opposite riverbank by rushing with your human units, but may get pushed back. That's okay, just try not to fight in the water while the enemy stands on the bank, or you will be at a disadvantage. Don't panic: once the allies arrive, they should make short work of the orcs.

Note: The scenario ends early if the orc leader is killed.

Spoiler: Your three human units have the "loyal" attribute, but don't bother trying to level them, because they go away at the end of the scenario. Likewise, all you can recruit are Walking Corpses, and they won't be worth recalling. If you're going to collect experience for anyone, it should be your main character. However, if a Walking Corpse kills something, you get another Walking Corpse.

=== A Peaceful Valley ===
* Objectives: Occupy all of the goblin villages
* Lose if: Malin Keshar or Darken Volk die or time runs out
* Turns: 29/26/23 (easy/medium/hard)
* Starting units: Malin Keshar and Darken Volk

0 to 2 Goblins will spring out of each village you capture, including those that you recapture. The key is to not capture many villages quickly. Ironically, this will allow you to capture all the villages more quickly.

In most scenarios, bats are highly useful in remote village capturing, but not in this scenario, as they would have little chance against the guards.

Walking corpses, on the other hand, are more useful than normal. Use them on wounded goblins to snowball your forces. Also use Walking Corpses as placeholders on captured villages to prevent them from easily reverting to enemy hands.

To kill the enemy leader, zap him with your leaders. Walking Corpses, if are in the area, can assist.

Spoiler: Do not try to beat this scenario without entering the swamp. Once you enter the swamp with either Malin Keshar or Darken Volk you will get three Ghouls, without which the scenario would be close to impossible.

=== A Haunting in Winter ===
* Objectives: Clear the cave of enemies
* Lose if: Malin Keshar or Darken Volk die or time runs out
* Turns: 36/34/32 (easy/medium/hard)
* Starting units: Malin Keshar and Darken Volk
You can recruit Ghosts on this level.

It's important to not get bottled up in the passageway prior to the central chamber, or you will burn up a lot of turns. Use Ghosts to speedily enter the chamber. After a certain point, you are going to split your forces, with Ghosts heading to the dwarves in the northeast and your two leaders and ground forces headed to the outlaws in the southwest. So, you should recruit a lot of Ghosts, at least five. Bats are useful to snatch up villages.

This scenario is a good opportunity to gain experience for your Ghosts. While both the Wraith and Shadow units are nice, it is especially useful to have at least 4 Shadows by a certain scenario. Your Ghosts can get easy experience from killing the Dwarves as they wade through the swamp in the northeast, and you should be able to level one or more to Shadows. Then you can use a Shadow or two, accompanied by a Ghost or two, to kill the dwarven leader. 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.

Spoiler: At one point there's a special event: one of your Ghosts will rebel and run off to the outlaw's keep. For each turn until you kill him, another of your units will rebel. You'll want to keep all of your Ghosts close by until one rebels, and then kill the rebel quickly. So, delay your Dwarf hunting expedition until the rebellion occurs, or recruit several Ghosts and keep them together so that the rest can subdue the one that goes rogue.

=== Beginning of the Revenge ===
* Objectives: Defeat the orc leaders, move Malin Keshar to the mountain pass
* Lose if: Malin Keshar or Darken Volk die or time runs out
* Turns: 36
* Starting units: Malin Keshar and Darken Volk
Starting with this mission you can recruit Skeletons and Skeleton Archers.

Understand that this is basically a leader assassination scenario. Note that the scenario ends when both orc leaders are dead; you do not need to move Malin Keshar to the signpost.

The mountainous geography begs you to use ghosts and their kin for mobility. Ghosts can cross the mountains and river left of your starting fortress. (So can Corpses, by the way, but slowly.) Unfortunately, the fire arrows are quite effective against ghosts, so tread carefully.

Players have used different strategies with success...

Option 1, assassination: Kill both leaders at once. Recruit/recall almost exclusively ghosts, shadows, and wraiths, and split them into two, one taskforce for each leader. A reasonable minimal strike force for one leader would be 5 ghosts and a shadow. Wait patiently across the river from the strongholds until darkness descends on turn 8. Then assassinate both leaders. If all goes well, the leaders will be dead by turn 9, for a nice gold bonus. Just in case it doesn't end so quickly, Malin Keshar and Darken Volk should have already been running into the deepest part of the southern mountains for safety. Exercise restraint with respect to capturing villages with bats or ghosts near the strongholds before the strike, as the enemy may divert units to intercept, which may interfere with your assassination plot.

Option 2, defeat in detail: Attack the southern orc first, then the northern orc. Ghosts and Bats can capture difficult to reach villages and move on, thus weakening your foes.

Option 3, feint: Use ghosts to discourage the enemy from concentrating his forces at the lake. Sending a few ghosts over the mountains and river allows you to distract the computer into sending troops back to its base, because it interprets the closer enemies as a larger threat. By doing this, you can delay the southern orcs and meet the northern orcs at the lake. Just be careful, because if you distract them too long, they build up a substantial force (rather then sending troops in piecemeal like the computer usually does) which takes a while to cut through.

Spoiler: Be careful when moving non-flying units onto the ice next to the bridge which separates you from the orcs' valley, as the ice weakens when a non-flying unit starts a turn on it and weakened ice then breaks and drowns any unit which starts a turn on in. This even applies to Skeletons and Skeleton Archers! Use breaking ice to your advantage; try to lure high level orcs to their demise by placing ghosts in the middle of weakened ice.

=== Orc War ===
* Objectives: Defeat the orc leaders
* Lose if: Malin Keshar or Darken Volk die or time runs out
* Turns: 30
* Starting units: Malin Keshar and Darken Volk
Starting with this mission you can recruit Dark Adepts.
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 (a Wraith does a good job of holding the bridge) then send the other force northwest to take out that leader first. At that point, if you've had particularly good luck 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.

Spoiler: After you kill two orc leaders the third will flee and this will end the scenario. You probably will want to postpone this as long as possible to allow your forces to gain experience.

=== Return to Parthyn ===
* Objectives: Kill Drogan then escape to the northwest
* Lose if: Malin Keshar dies or any people from Parthyn die (except Drogan)
* Turns: n/a
* Starting units: Malin Keshar and a Wraith, Shadow, or Spectre, if available

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. If you recall an appealing target like a Revenant into the keep's northwest hex, Drogan should run out to shoot some arrows at it. Between this and recalling another Wraith or Shadow as a backup plan, it should be easy to take out Drogan and discover, oops, the Parthyn townspeople hate you anyway. Wraiths and Shadows are particularly effective, since they can fly across the river quite quickly. After you kill Drogan, you should escape across the river and to the west.

Option 1: Kill the orcs so that you can flee across the ford. This shouldn't be a problem. What might be a problem is that the Parthyn troops will continue to attack you as you flee.

Option 2: Leave the ford open, and cross in water at far right, hoping for the orcs and village militia to clash and leave you alone, at least until the orcs are dead. As additional an additional distraction, you can send some Ghouls and Walking Corpses south/southwest in the forest. Both this and the first option have the disadvantage that 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.

Option 3: Stay and fight. You don't have to flee immediately. But you face fairly strong opposition and will probably take enough casualties that it isn't really worth it to stay and fight longer than you need to. Also, you'll have to recruit enough units that you lose gold each turn, since there's no time limit, if you defeat the Parthyn 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, because you'll need your high level troops for the next mission.

===A Small Favor - Part One===
* Objectives: Malin Keshar and Darken Volk enter the manor
* Lose if: Malin Keshar or Darken Volk die or time runs out
* Turns: 28/26/22 (easy/medium/hard)
* Starting units: Malin Keshar and Darken Volk

First off, you can capture the free villages scattered around near your keep, but don't capture any enemy occupied villages.

Then there are a few options that players have tried with success:

Option 1, leader assassination: You should have at least 2 Shadows (or Nightgaunts), preferably more, to assassinate the leader. Their nightstalk ability gets them past the perimeter guards and directly to the enemy leader. Take him out in one turn or two, or he will recruit heavily. Keep Malin and Volk out of sight. After you takeout the enemy leader, take out the rest of the human troops and capture the rest of the villages at your leisure. Once that is accomplished, send Volk directly to the manor, but send Malin to the enemy commander's keep. Wait here accumulating cash each turn until the penultimate turn. On the penultimate turn recruit all the units you will want to take forward into part 2; Wraiths and Shadows are particularly useful, while level 1 units are not. Then move Malin towards the manor. On the last turn move Malin into the manor to join Volk to end the scenario. While carry over gold won't help you in parts two and three (no recruiting), it will carry over to the next scenario.

Option 2, mage assassination: It is possible to win this part without any Shadows. You can use about 6 Wraiths/Spectres and slip them around the north of the map as near to the entrance of the manor as possible while staying out of sight (you can see how much your enemies can see with Ctrl-v). Malin and Darken Volk should take the same route, but can't get as far as the Ghosts. Then take out as many enemies as you can with your Ghosts, targeting the Mages first, and rush towards the manor with your heroes. You should be inside before the battle gets ugly.

Option 3, guard assassination: If you kill a guard in one turn, he won't have time to raise the alarm. Therefore, you can proceed across the map, assassinating guards one by one, until you get within strike distance of the leader.

===A Small Favor - Part Two===
* Objectives: Defeat Mage Lord Karres then move through the northwest passage
* Lose if: Malin Keshar or Darken Volk die or time runs out
* Turns: 30/27/25 (easy/medium/hard)
* Starting units: Malin Keshar, Darken Volk and any units that survived the previous scenario

* Other: You can't recruit or recall; only the units from last scenario will be present
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.

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 Swordsmen 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 [Thrash: He just had a single Red Mage for me in 1.8.3.]. 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. Head northwest with Malin and move on.

There doesn't seem to be any bonus for an early finish, so if you get the objective early, you can hold off and harvest some XP.

===A Small Favor - Part Three===
* Objectives: Find the book and then escape
* Lose if: Malin Keshar or Darken Volk die or time runs out
* Turns: 30/27/25 (easy/medium/hard)
* Starting units: Malin Keshar and any units that survived the previous scenario
* Other
** You can't recruit or recall; only the units from last scenario will be present
** You no longer control Darken Volk

Darken Volk will operate separately with an army of allied undead. Hmmm, in all previous missions you commanded him directly... could this be foreshadowing? Head to the northwest to grab the book. Then head to the northeast to exit.

===Alone at Last===
* Objectives: Take the book from Darken Volk and bring it back to Malin's castle
* Lose if: Malin Keshar dies
* Turns: n/a
* Starting units: Malin Keshar and one unit
* Other: Ghosts and Bats (and the rest of their unit trees) cannot pick up the book

The situation is that you must take the book from Darken Volk, but two additional armies will appear, bent on killing both your army and Volk's, making the task more than a little difficult. You probably don't have much money, and your forces will be vastly outnumbered. To win requires supreme strategy.

On turn 5, 6, or 7 (for hard, medium, or easy, respectively) Sir Cadaeus arrives to take revenge for your attack on the city of Tath. He sets up camp in the southeast corner of the map. His formidable forces will attack both you and Volk if given the opportunity. More usefully, Volk will attack him. In addition to sending his forces to attack Sir Cadaeus', Volk himself will normally dash into fray, to his doom.

After Volk dies, he leaves behind the book, which you need to retrieve and bring to your initial keep. Ghosts and Bats (and Spectres, Shadows, Wraiths, and Nightgaunts) can't carry the book.

On turn 9, 10, or 11 (for hard, medium, or easy, respectively) Dela Keshar will show up to the north, set up camp and send forces to attack you as well.

Note: On 1.8.3 and many earlier versions, Dela is impervius to your attacks, though Darken Volk's minions can both wound and kill her. This hardly seems fair, so you may wish to place a unit on what will be her central keep hex before she arrives. She will then appear one hex away and be unable to recruit, so long as you maintain a unit there. A Dark Sorcerer will hold her off. (kimnor: as of 1.8.5 her camp appears wherever she does and you can't stop her from recruiting.)

For general strategy, players have had success with at least three alternatives, which all try to avoid combat to a greater or lesser extent...

Option 1, the Northern end around: Summon a few good troops and move everyone almost due north and then east and south towards Volk's keep, trying to avoid battle as long as possible. Once Sir Cadaeus arrives, Volk's forces will shift their attention to the south.

Option 2, the Southern deception: In addition to an elite thrust to the North as above, add a fairly large and fast feint to the Southeast with several Ghosts and Bats to encourage Volk to go south. You must move far quickly to make a large effect.

Option 3, the Waiting game: Recruit just a couple of bats initially for village capturing out of range of the enemy. Once Sir Cadeus' forces arrive, begin recruiting in earnest and make a dash for the book. Be warned that you will probably lose a lot of the units in the process, so try to avoid recalling troops that you might need in a later scenario.

Whatever initial course you take, the end game is the same: you will need to retrieve the book with a nonflying unit and head west, back to your keep.

Note: For versions later than 1.8.5, this scenario is being rebalanced to make it easier, especially on easy.

===Descent into Darkness===
* Objectives: Defeat the troll leader
* Lose if: Mal Keshar is destroyed
* Turns: n/a
* Starting units: Mal Keshar
The first segment of the mission is pretty self-explanatory. After you reach the small keep you need to decide which way to send your troops to the large castle, there is a main passage and two side passages. I'm not sure it matters, but I successfully advanced through the main passage. You will face some high level trolls, including Troll Shamans capable of throwing deadly fireballs at your undead minions. There's no particularly good defense against these things, but I will note that all the trolls also deal impact damage, which your Skeletons are weak against, so you may want to avoid recalling your Skeletons.

Addition by cMaster: Wraiths/Spectres are actually quite good at killing Troll Shamans, since they deal arcane damage. So you just have to make sure, that you get to the Shamans before they get to you. If you can't take out one of them, stay out of his reach.

Addition by smenze: I just finished up this scenario and it was as easy as I have ever played. After the intro, pretty much run by past the creatures that are there for you to regain your strength on. If you get really unlucky with your counter attacks, you can die this way, but normally you won't. Grab the castle on the west side of the passageway and recall some Nightgaunts (3 was more then enough for me). I just sent them straight up the passage to the main castle, and stabbed the troll leader to death leading to an instant victory.

Addition by Adeptus: Since this scenario is quite easy, it's a good chance to train your units and see strange monsters. In both side passages you can find a Troll Shaman, few Trolls and lots of villages. But the left passage is more interesting: in the middle of some water there's a tree where an Ancient Woose waits to ambush. Shadows and Wraiths will kill him easily. Enjoy its dying animation! At the top left of this room there's a path that leads to the hardest step of the scenario: 3 Giant Spiders. Try to make them follow you outside through the corridor to sorround them one by one.

===Eternal Night===
* Objectives: Defeat the foolish hero
* Lose if: Mal Keshar is destroyed
* Turns: n/a
* Starting units: Mal Keshar
Play this scenario as many times as you want to. If Malin is defeated, the defeating hero will give a short monologue and the campaign will end.

Addition by cMaster: If you care to play this scenario more than just a few times, it might be worth noting the small cavity to the right at the bottom of the map. You can easily place 11 units inside (you won't be able to recall more than 10 units + Mal Keshar) and it's got a choke point of only two hexes. Use this to chew away any enemy foolish enough to enter the choke point, and forget about the seven villages. Your enemy will not be able to pay the upkeep of his troops anyway. Correctly used you should not have to fear any number of enemies!

[[Category:Campaigns]]