DelfadorsMemoirs

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.

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.

So far, this is just one player's comments, so feel free to refine the suggestions or add alternatives (otherwise it is just a "how I completed DM" guide).

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; in the water or on sand they are at a disadvantage and can't concentrate attacks easily from the bad terrain.

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 then recruit later on). There are enough villages to fund recruiting or recalling 9 units and still have positive income throughout. At Great Mage 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 won't need more than two - the enemy uses a lot of troll whelps, so you are better off recalling or recruiting mages, plus a couple of spearmen to play defence in the first night.

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.

I exited as early as I could manage, but the early finish bonus is only 15/turn and I was getting 14/turn anyway, so perhaps it would be better to milk the level for XP instead.

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.

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 40% of the enemy gold - hence I think that you are better off not paying in general. At Easy it is even worse, as only get rid of 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.

You could include a heavy-infantry in your recruit - not great for this level, but it would be useful to give one some XP so it can level up during the next level. What you need is two white mages by the time you finish this level, and one or two other mages at L2 or nearly there will help also.

Paying the charge

The level is playable paying the charge if you are coming in with ~250 gold or more (mainly because, although the AI has 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 small 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, to go with Lionel to hold the centre island) and marched Delfador 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

Grab some Heavy infantry and mages. 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. Or you can milk it for XP if you like - it is a good chance to get XP for mages.

At hard, an early exit looks unlikely as one generator is some way off in hostile terrain. If it doesn't look practical to storm them, then don't bother and just milk for XP; an early exit by only 1 or 2 turns doesn't gain you much since the bonus is small and you will have had negative cashflow for ~10 turns, so probably won't be above the 100 start gold for the next level anyway.

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.

NOTE: spoilers here. (Okay, so the whole walkthrough is somewhat spoilerish, but generally it doesn't give away anything that detracts from the experience of playing. On this occasion, you might think it spoils the level to see the following.) 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).

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.

The Gate Between Worlds

Objectives: kill Iliah-Malal

You get to recruit ghosts and ghouls here, your allies of the last level. Money should be no problem. Don't overdo the ghosts - get 4-5 for scouting and killing the enemy's bats, and to pick off stragglers. Your main army has to 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 them into the swamp and then crush them with a wave of ghouls, backed by Delfador's leadership.

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 at least one scout to steal all your ally's villages, otherwise she will keep recruiting L2 units and stealing your XP.

Terror at the Ford of Parthyn

Objectives: defeat both the orc and undead leaders.

TODO

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's 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.

Old Version

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

This could probably all be removed now.

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