DescentIntoDarkness

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 loyal human soldiers. Don't bother leveling 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.

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. Reaching the other shore is much harder by yourself, wait for your allies to help kill things. Capture villages and let your human allies do the hard work.

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 useful, it is important to have at least 4 Shadows by a certain scenario. You 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 dwarf 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 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 prolong 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

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 Parthyn townspeople hate you anyway. I found that Wraiths and Shadows were particularly effective since they can fly across the river quite quickly. 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 Parthyn 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. 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

As far as I can tell there's only one way to win this scenario and the requires having at least 4 Shadows (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 visible. And keep Malin and Volk 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.

Addition by cMaster: It is possible to win this part without any Shadows. I use 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 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 of course, and rush towards the manor with your heroes. You should be inside before the battle gets ugly.

It is possible to take out the enemy leader with two Nightgaunts using backstab. Their nightstalk ability gets them past the perimeter guards and directly to the enemy leader. Take him out in one turn or he will recruit heavily. The enemy forces present (if you killed the leader before he could recruit) are minimal. I took them all out with just the two Nightgaunts previously mentioned, two Spectres, two Blood Bats, and Malin and Volk. Once you take out all the enemy units and capture all the villages 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 then move Malin towards the manor. On the last turn move Malin into the manor to join Volk to end the scenario. As there is no early finish bonus, delaying in this way you can accumulate several hundred extra gold for use in later scenarios.

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. 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.

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

So you've got to fight it out with Darken Volk. You probably don't have much money, which makes this difficult to win in a straightforward manner.

On turn 5 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. He will attack both you and Volk if given the opportunity. More usefully, Volk will attack him, so what you probably want to do is send some units to the east to draw Volk's minions south, while sending the best troops you can recall up to the north of Volk. When Sir Cadaeus arrives, Volk's forces will be split on two fronts, so you should be able to take him out. If you're lucky, his forces will also take out Sir Cadaeus.

After you kill Volk, he leaves behind the book, which you want to retrieve and bring to the keep you started the scenario at. Ghosts and Bats (and Spectres, Shadows, Wraiths, and Nightgaunts) can't carry the book, so you want to have sent at least one unit not of this kind with the units you used to kill Volk. In particular, Malin himself is a good choice.

On turn 9 Dela Keshar will show up to the north, set up camp and send forces to attack you as well.

An alternative strategy is to summon a few good troops and move everyone to the north, delaying the battle with Darken Volk's minions as long as possible. Once Sir Cadaeus arrives, Volk will shift his attention to the south. Meanwhile, you can stake out an empty field north of Volk's stronghold and wait a few turns. After Dela shows up and is directly dispatched, you can recruit a few more troops and head south to finish off Darken Volk, grab the book and head west to escape.

Addition by Robert.Olesen: I played using 1.6.4 on Normal difficulty. Dela was invincible, so there was no point in attacking her. I also found that Cadaeus was a good deal stronger than Darken Volk, so I really needed Darken Volk to focus his attention on Cadeus, not on me. My solution was to recall only a couple of flyers at start, and use these to take villages while staying out of sight so as to not draw Darken Volks units to attack me. When Cadaeus appeared I started recalling/recruiting in earnest, and then went after the book. Darken Volk would invariably leave his camp to join the fight, and thus the book would appear close to Cadaeus units. I was barely able to attack Cadaeus, take the book with Malik and escape with him back to the castle, but it cost me a lot of good units. I should probably have recruited expendable units instead of recalling. I did, however, manage Descent into Darkness with what I had left, so it wasn't all that bad.

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.

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!