Dead Water

This walkthrough is a draft in progress, starting with the comments in the cfg files, which are based on normal difficulty. Maiklas3000 is updating the comments for difficult (Triton/nightmare) level.

Campaign Strategy

You have piercing-attack Mermen to fight pierce-resistant Undead. What to do? Fortunately, for this campaign you are given a special impact unit, namely the Merman Basher, which is an advancement of Merman Citizen, the peasants of the Mermen. Spamming Citizens and promoting them to Bashers is one of the keys to the campaign. Take note of the Bashers' tail attacks with "stun", which can sometimes be used to good effect to disrupt Z.O.C's. You should also aggressively advance Hunters to Netcasters for their impact attacks, with "slow" as a bonus on the ranged attack. Many scenarios benefit from having at least two healers, so you should also promote an Initiate or two (or three) to Priestess early on, to supplement your starting Priestess, Cylanna, whom you should try to promote quickly to Diviner for the illumination. Fighters/Warriors and Spearmen are less useful in this campaign, but you do not always fight Undead, so groom a few on your roster "just in case."

Scenarios

Invasion

This scenario is tricky. Mastering a winning strategy may take you a few attempts.

A key feature of this scenario is that when the Undead capture any village, Walking Corpses spawn. (Soulless spawn on Difficult.) Your basic strategy should be to take and hold as many villages as possible, both to prevent the spawning and to boost your income. If possible, grant the enemy only the three villages closest to his keep (not counting the two in the mountains, which your Mermen can't do anything about.) If you don't let many villages fall into enemy hands, eventually your income will be overwhelming.

You must spam Citizens. First turn, recruit only a couple of level 1 units, and the rest Citizens. Send the level 1's south to capture and protect villages there and send the Citizens in all directions to snatch up villages.

Try not to lose any of the villages north of the eastern river. On Difficult, this is a challenge, but quite possible. To accomplish this, it is necessary that you got a Quick Citizen in the east on the scenario start, so that it can help Cylanna protect the villages there from the Skeleton that starts nearby. Keep that area free of Soulless and Walking Corpses, so that you can concentrate your Citizens there and suicide attack them versus Skeletons.

If you do start losing villages in the east, it may not be the end of the world. Send one or more Fighter or Hunter along with Citizens to the northeast to hold villages. You can sacrifice the land villages, but hold the ones in the water. Use Cylanna, Gwabbo, and a few citizens to just hold off the Skeletons and Soulless southeast of your keep until the village situation is under control.

Let the swimming Soulless/WC advance a bit towards your keep, so that your baby king can dart out to get an easy kill or two. As Gwabbo hints, you would be wise to get Krellis as much experience as possible this scenario; it will make the next scenario much easier.

Attack during the day, but retreat and heal at night. Keep your Citizens and wounded safe from becoming WC's, which often means sitting them on villages, but you can think of other ways, like using the ZOC's of level 1's and 2's to protect them.

Bat control is essential. Don't let even one Bat get into your rear area, or it may spell defeat. Initiates are good against Bats. A key to success is understanding how the Bats work. They will forego capturing a village in favor of making an attack. So, if there is a friendly or unowned village within range of a Bat, you have to make sure the Bat has someone to attack. Citizens make good bat bait.

Towards the end, your income will be quite large, so it's better to milk XP than go for an early finish. You can swarm the enemy keep with Citizens and take your time to end it. Try to turn some of the Citizens into Brawlers.

Flight

Hopefully Kai Krellis is at least half leveled up already. Otherwise, this can be painful, as one of the victory conditions is that the Kai must be at least level 1.

You must decide whether to attack east or southwest. To the east is the prospect of more experience, while to the southwest is an easier foe and less distance for Krellis to travel back to the signpost.

Option 1, east: Recruit a bunch of Citizens and Brawlers, and send them east with Krellis. Use Citizens to lure the Skeleton Archer types into the water. They are easy pickings there for other Citizens, Brawlers, and Krellis. One of those guys gets Krellis half way up to level one. A few Citizens should also survive to become Brawlers. Remember that you can often turn a near-dead Citizen into a healthy Brawler by going for a kill, especially with the leadership of Krellis if he is already at level 1. About the time you get Krellis leveled up, and you are thinking about retreating everyone else, the bats will arrive. On Difficult, this will be a nasty number of Blood Bats. Use Hunters and Initiates to clear a path back west. Send three or four expendable units with Krellis. Their job is only to serve as bat bait, distracting the bats from Krellis, so that he does not get ZOC-locked. Krellis runs for the corner, while the rest of the troops gain experience doing a fighting retreat from the skeletons, and other bad guys arriving in the middle of the map.

Option 2, southwest: Send Citizens east, while your best troops go southwest. After you advance to where you meet the enemy, you will start retreating almost as quickly, especially at night. Feed near dead Blood Bats to Krellis for experience.

Whichever option you choose, this is not the normal sort of scenario where you will slaughter all the enemy. Remember that you are just trying to get enough experience for Krellis to level up. Then have him run like hell for the signpost. Ignore gold for now. You don't need much on the next level.

Killing all the enemy leaders will end the level, but that won't be easy. However, killing any enemy leader is good for a bonus.

Spoiler: Each one gives you a different bonus: cash, a loyal bat, or a ring of strength.

Wolf Coast

This is a fairly easy level to give you a break. Go north, then lure wolves into the water where you can pick them off. If the wolves come in too big of a pack, you can split them up by sending Citizens off to the edges, in (or next to) shallow water.

You really should get a second healer leveled up here if you haven't yet. Netcasters and enchantresses are probably your next priorities. You'll want a bunch of both.

There is a storm trident in the southeast, sticking out of a pond. A fighter would be a wise choice of holder, simply because they have a lot of hit points. With the trident, he will level quickly. When you get him to level 3, choose Triton, as Hoplites have only pierce melee attack (bad for Skeletons.)

Money is useful going into the next scenario, but it's hard to get money out of this scenario. Scrounge every gold piece you can by starting with mostly level 1's (and 0's) and taking villages.

Slavers

You're welcome for the free, loyal brawler. There are two cages on the shore. One contains Keshan, a drake burner who can be very useful during the campaign, and the other contains a poacher named Siddry. He's not going to be much help here; you will have to work to keep him alive, and he won't come with you. However, if you succeed, he comes back in The Flaming Sword with some friends who are a big help taking villages in the beginning (and not much help thereafter). If Siddry lives, he will be stored in a variable until then. The shipwreck in the north contains a treasure chest with 100 gold.

Send someone north to get gold. Recruit about two castles, one of which should be all level 2's. Hopefully that includes at least one more healer. Healers are essential here. Any units close to leveling are especially good. Send everyone east. Be aggressive in taking out the troops and getting to the leader, but don't leave any units out and exposed. You should probably instigate the slave rebellion as night comes at the end of your first offensive. That will keep some the retalliation against you low, and slow down the Saurians coming towards you from the north. When it's safe, rescue the drake, and try to get him some experience--carefully. After taking out the leader, you can recruit a unit or two as replacements, but you shouldn't need more than that. You should just be getting involved with the first wave from the north leader now. (He's slowed down by the water.) Sit tight around the castle until the enemy onslaught has thinned out. After that it should be no problem wiping out the other two leaders--if you have survived this far, you have quite a few high-level units.

Tirigaz

This level is not too hard. Don't go too negative on gold, but recruit three or four high-level units. You need mostly leveled initiates for their magic ranged attacks. Keshan is a big help, and so is the unit with the storm trident. If you decide to go after the orc leader, wait until the undead are dispatched. Heal everyone, then assemble just to the north of his keep. Don't touch the ships or piers though! Wait until day time, then send in all the units with magical attacks. Use other units to keep the slurbows busy. Hopefully the leader won't kill anyone before your next turn. One more round of magical attacks should kill him before his recruits start beating you up. Killing the orc leader isn't really necessary, but he helps someone level up, and he has a fair bit of gold. The next level is much easier with lots of gold.

Uncharted Islands

Get a couple quick lower-level units first to start taking gold. Also get some level one cannon fodder to help soak up the awesome damage capability of the first wave of monsters. Then, recall your most powerful units. You need firepower. You also could really use the slow ability of netcasters and entanglers. Two healers are probably a minimum. Slide the first units around the edges getting gold, because your income will be very negative in a hurry, and you probably need all the firepower you can get. Don't worry about gold too much though--you probably can't start the next scenario with more than the minimum. Keshan can handle the upper middle section himself. He is good against the tentacles, and even the cuttlefish if he stays healed. Put everyone else in the middle. Use your auras as much as possible: leadership and illuminate (Cylanna is a diviner by now isn't she?), and use "slows" to keep all your units from dying. You will probably lose a couple leveled-up ones anyway.

The loyal cuttle fish isn't terribly useful, but cool to have anyway. When he levels into a kraken, he is quite a bit nicer to have. (And pretty cool looking if I do say so myself.)

BilHeld

This scenario should be rated "R" for massive violence! Both sides can do lots of damage to the other. Here's where you can use all the piercing units you have. Hopefully you haven't been totally ignoring the spearman and warrior lines. Even level one units can do pretty high damage to drakes though, so you can level up some more here. Don't get any units besides piercing ones. Netcasters aren't really necessary, and one diviner is enough. Actually, don't get any units for about four turns. The drakes will take a while getting to you, so just take some villages and let your income work. Don't worry about *holding* the villages, you'll get a bonus in the end if you survive. Just worry about getting enough units that you do survive. Let the first wave of drakes come to you. You'll have the advantage in the water--even against high-level units. They will kill some of your weaker units, but you will do far more damage to them, and level up some new ones in the process. If you survive the first wave, you should be fine. You will have to do a little fighting on land, but you can stay mostly in villages at least. Just be careful about how many units can attack each of yours.

Talking to Tyegea

Give one of your leveled fighters the holy water. Those units won't be as useful after one more scenario unless they have special weapons.

The Mage

You need pierce and fire to take care of scorpions. Javelineers get one more level to shine. Diviners are also great. Hopefully you have Keshan and the storm trident because those will be very useful. Keshan is especially helpful in actually finding the mage. He can get there several turns ahead of even the fastest Merman (after you take out most of the scorpions in the way), but of course you don't need him.

The Flaming Sword

You defeat the lich to try to get the sword, but as soon as the lich drops it, Caladon teleports in and picks it up. Now, you need to defeat Caladon to get the sword. He grants you time to leave, which is actually a turn to remove any very damaged units from the vicinity as Caladon is pretty dangerous. You can attack him now, or wait a turn for him to get impatient and attack you. When he attacks, or you attack him, he summons fire guardians (stolen from UtBS). He does not also recruit, because that would just be mean. (There is no reason he would have much gold anyway.)

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Revenge

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