Difference between revisions of "DelfadorsMemoirs"

Revision as of 05:14, 15 August 2010

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.

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. One red mage is all you will want, for map 8.
- 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 - many of the early levels suit horsemen well, and you should pick a couple of good horsemen and level them all the way up to paladins. These will be valuable in the later levels.
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 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.

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 I think that you are better off not paying in general. At Easy it is even worse, as the net effect is only about -25% of the enemy gold.

And 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.

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. I suggest a couple of horsemen, 2 white mages, recall 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.

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.

I recruited as much as I could, which was only 2 raw spearmen and a horseman recall; these go with Lionel to hold the centre island and take the villages there. Delfador marched to the vacated NW keep, taking villages on the way. Once there I had accumulated enough gold to recall a few more units and so could bring a second force into play.

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. The ghosts act as allies, but usually throw their, uh, existences away against the skeletons quite quickly; at least they distract the skeletons while you take villages. If you can, keep any allies with XP alive - they will join your army free in the next level. But it's hard to do so don't worry if you fail.

NOTE: spoilers. (Okay, so a walkthrough is always spoilerish, but generally playing hints don't detract from the experience of playing. On this occasion, you might feel that it spoils this excellent level to see this hint.) Once you get around to Sythan's village, as noted by one of the other ghosts there is a secret passage in one of the little paths up into the mountains to the north. This takes you to the chamber with the Staff, where you can hole up in a village and fight off the skeletons. This route is probably easier than the direct approach, as there is an ambush when you take either village to the east of the castle, and the enemy leader packs a powerful melee attack.

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. Don't overdo the Ghosts - get 4-5 for scouting and killing the enemy's Bats, and to pick off stragglers. Your main army should be Ghouls, as the enemy will recruit a lot of Dark Adepts and they can kill a Ghost in one turn, so your Ghosts will have to stay away from the main fight. Draw the enemy into the swamp and then crush them with a wave of Ghouls, backed by Delfador's leadership.

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.

One strategy here is to send one scout south to find the ford guard (which then come under your control), while recruiting an army to go west and take out the orc leader. I played the level this way at Great Mage and... it went badly, although I won in the end. If playing this way, withdraw the ford guard entirely to the castle south of the ford and hole up there until relieved.

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.

An alternative strategy is to race 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 a lot of chance to fight amongst themselves. Needs investigation and comments.

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.

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 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. 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).

[Gia_Boy] In addition to Lionel and Kalenz, I gave the third holy water to a knight. I renamed said night 'Smitey' after he killed the southeast leader by himself, I think with an attack of 50-2.

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, you want two combat groups, each covering a road and heading for a bridge. You get given Chantal, and I would recall a second druid or shyde so you have a healer and someone to entangle any royal guards that you encounter with each combat group. The rest of your recall should be top melee units (champions and avengers mainly). Move fairly quickly so the enemy don't sneak to the signposts; after that it is an easy mopping up exercise.

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

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 uses nightgaunts to ambush and slip in through any gaps). Beware of putting Delfador in front, as the enemy will use Banebows like walking corpses for suicide attacks against him.

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

Version 0.3: (9 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.7.11 (=0.7.11 for the tarball)

Version 0.4: (10 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.7.11, <= 0.8.3

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