A Song of Fire Walkthrough

NOTE: This is still very unfinished - I'm still working on it! -Inky

This is a walkthrough for A Song of Fire (ASoF), a 36 scenario add-on campaign by revansurik featuring the Elementals, Aragwaithi and Windsong from the War of Legends era. This campaign is the first part of the Dragon Trilogy; the next two campaigns are War of the Jewel and Aria of the Dragonslayer.

This walkthrough was written by Inky based on ASoF version 0.5.8 on Hard. Feel free to make corrections or add your own advice.

Known Bugs/Issues (as of campaign version 0.5.8)

• On Hard difficulty only, there are a couple typos with the gold. To fix these, open the scenario .cfg files (located in the data/add-ons/A_Song_of_Fire/scenarios folder - if you don't know where your add-ons folder is, open Wesnoth, go to Preferences -> General and click on the Paths button) in a text editor such as Notepad, but preferably something which displays line numbers, such as Notepad++.
  • Scenario 1: Line 77 of 01_Rain_of_Fire.cfg should be {GOLD 180 160 140} instead of {GOLD 180 160 14}.
  • Scenaro 13: Line 365 of 13_Twilight_Of_The_Kingdoms.cfg should be {GOLD 550 500 450} instead of {GOLD 550 500 4500}.
• In Scenario 11 (Legend of the Water Dragon), you'll be unable to finish the scenario if you move Myra back to her keep before visiting the fountain. More details and a fix here: https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=38210&start=240#p580591.

Unit Overview

This is a chart to keep track of the various recalls which change many times throughout the campaign. The campaign is divided into three parts, but recalls carry over between parts. In certain scenarios some of the other races will have their own separate side, but will remain under the player's control.

The darker shades indicate that while recalls of that race are available, new recruits are not.

Race	Playable scenarios
	1	2	3	4	5	7	9	10	11	12	13	14	15*	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	31	32	33	35
Elementals
Dwarves
Aragwaithi
Windsong
Hannuks
Humans

*Scenario 15 is unique in that you may not recruit or recall, but start the scenario with every single unit on your recall list.

The main enemies you will be fighting for the first half of the campaign (up to Scenario 19) are drakes. In the later half of the campaign you will mostly be fighting minotaurs, vampires, and celestials.

Elementals

• Wisps: These are extremely important since they level into your only healers, the Ethereal Orb. Try to start leveling them in the first two scenarios; you'll want several by Scenario 4. The Ethereal Orb's maximum level is 1, but their AMLA (After maximum level advancement) gives +5 HP and +1 damage, so it's worth it to keep giving them XP. Combined with leadership, they can even be extremely potent damage dealers, especially against units weak to arcane such as drakes.
• Brazier Imps: Since they do fire damage, they aren't very effective in the beginning against drakes. However they become very useful later against other units such as undead and trolls. It's recommended to level them into Furnace Beasts, which are much more durable than Fire Wisps and can reach level 4 (Lava Behemoth), becoming an extremely durable tanking unit.
• Kobolds: These (along with Lava Behemoths) are your main tanking units. They have extremely high resistances, but they are very slow (they never get above 4 movement), so their usefulness depends on the map. They are essential in Scenario 3 against Saurians, and very useful in defense scenarios (there are plenty in this campaign) such as Scenario 4.
• Razorbirds: Generally pretty useless; these are only good for scouting/village grabbing, however wisps can usually do the job just as well, and without the upkeep costs.
• Sylphs: With their cold marksman damage they are your main damage dealers against drakes, and they also have excellent mobility since they can fly. However they are quite fragile, so they need to be used carefully.
• Tidals: These are water based elementals and have poor movement and defense on land, so they are not very useful due to the general lack of water terrain. (There is one water based scenario, Scenario 20, but it can be completed just as well with flying units like ethereal orbs and leveled sylphs.) While the Ice Crab advancement can move well on land, it is still not really worth using due to its extreme weakness to fire damage, which is very common in this campaign.
• Vine Beasts: These are not useful due to a general lack of forest terrain, lack of durability (they only reach level 2) and a weakness to drakes' fire damage.

Dwarves

Dwarvish Lords (especially Quick ones) are one of the most useful unit types in the campaign, with their durability and good movement through rough terrain. In Scenario 14 you control a separate dwarvish side and temporarily gain the ability to recruit high level dwarves, so after Scenario 14 you should have plenty of Dwarvish Lords on your recall list. However, they often won't be available in the later part of the campaign.

Aragwaithi

Aragwaithi Guardians (level 3 spearmen) are probably the most useful unit type, being quite durable and the best unit for dealing with all the drakes you'll be facing in the first half of the campaign. The spearmen can also advance to ancient banners which have level 4 leadership; however you already have an Aragwaithi Captain hero (Ravyan), and later on Myra also gets level 5 leadership so it's not really necessary to level another ancient banner.

Windsong

Leveled scribes (Arbiters/Librarians) with their powerful arcane slowing attack will absolutely destroy drakes. It's recommended to recruit some savants in Scenario 14 when you can temporarily recruit level 2 Windsong, and level them to arbiters by Scenario 19 (Fires of Hope), a defense scenario against drakes which is possibly the most difficult scenario in the campaign. However, arbiters/librarians become pretty useless in the last part of the campaign against celestials, which are almost immune to arcane damage.

Other useful units include leveled gatekeepers (for tanking) and envoys (cold damage against drakes, and teleport).

Hannuks

• Charioteers: These are actually pretty useless, mostly due to their bad movetype (they're extremely slowed down by rough terrain, and only have 5 base movement at level 3), unreliable damage and weakness to fire.
• Horse archers: They have a lawful ranged based advancement (Mangudai -> Tarkan) and a chaotic melee advancement (Raider -> Conqueror), both of which can be useful for their mobility. However, they are quite bad defensively and also do badly on rough terrain.
• Wood hunters: These are extremely useful for scenarios with forests, such as Scenario 23 and Scenario 24. They're great damage dealers and, despite their weakness to physical attacks, are quite durable due to their dodginess and ability to slow.

Humans

By the time you can recruit humans in Scenario 27 it's already very late in the campaign and you will have hordes of more powerful veterans, so it may not be worth bothering with them. Some royal guards can be nice for tanking and lawful damage though. Avoid the chevalier/crusader advancement of the infantryman because the arcane damage is useless against celestials.

Part I: The Last War

S1 Rain of Fire

• Objectives: Defeat the drake leader.

Drakes are extremely weak to cold damage, so your main recruits here should be sylphs. The wisp's arcane damage is also good against drakes. Send a wisp up the right side to grab your ally's villages, since you can put the gold to better use.

Try to get your wisps some XP, since you'll want a +8 healer soon. Try to feed some kills to Veela also, since she'll need the HP boost from leveling up.

S2 A Common Cause

• Objectives: Defeat the drake leader.

The dwarves and trolls start out hostile, but on Turn 2 will both ally with you against the drakes. As usual, sylphs are your most effective unit against drakes. Send a fast unit like a wisp or razorbird to steal the eastern ally's villages. Myra can also borrow the dwarf leader's keep to recruit reinforcements.

During the day when the drakes are strongest, you can back off and let your allies take most of the hits. Your allies will do most of the work in this scenario; just try to sneak in and finish off wounded drakes.

S3 Monstrous Help

• Objectives: Defeat the two enemy leaders in the north.
• Notes:
  • On turn 12 a second saurian leader will show up.
  • On turn 14, Myra will summon a large group of loyal giant spiders in the center of the map. They will not come with you later, so they are expendable.

This is a very difficult scenario; hopefully you have 400+ starting gold, and you'll probably have to spend most of it. (However, try to avoid going negative on income, since next scenario is even harder and you will need decent carryover.) You'll mainly be facing saurian skirmishers and saurian oracles, which have very high mobility and defense in caves.

The hard counter for saurians is kobolds, which have 60% pierce resistance to the skirmishers and 20% cold resistance to the oracles. In addition, the kobolds heal 5 HP per turn on cave terrain. Your army should consist of mainly kobolds, maybe with some dwarvish fighters mixed in. Leveled sylphs with their cold marksman damage will be useful for killing off those dodgy skirmishers, but they are fragile and have terrible defense on cave terrain so they'll need to be protected. Brazier imps are also very mobile in caves and do good damage against saurians, but they are very weak to cold damage so they need to be used with care.

Try to fight the saurians in the chokepoints, so that the skirmishers can't gang up on you. Also, be wary of skirmishers popping out of the shroud since they're very fast and you often won't be able to see them- if you have an important wounded unit try to cover it from all sides. Once Myra's spiders arrive on turn 14, you can use them aggressively since they only join for this scenario.

You will need some tanks (leveled kobolds, or leveled dwarvish fighters) and healers (ethereal orbs) for next scenario.

S4 Lightning Strike

• Objectives: Survive until the end of turns.
• Notes:
  • On turn 10, the two drake enemy leaders get some major reinforcements (600 gold each).
  • On turn 11, Dvalin will show up in the south with some loyal dwarvish veterans.

This is an extremely difficult scenario, one of the most difficult in the entire campaign. Hopefully you have 400+ starting gold; if not you may need to replay the previous scenario for more gold. Don't worry about gold carryover; you probably can't avoid going very negative and next scenario is easy even with minimum gold. The southwest saurian leader will flee once he is attacked, so if you can sneak a unit next to him you can get rid of him pretty early on.

On turn 1, you can either recall some units to deal with the saurians and then run Myra north, or run Myra straight north to the city without recalling anything. Either way Myra should head straight for the city, since the defenses there won't last long. Once she's there, recall all your veterans (leveled kobolds or leveled dwarvish fighters are essential) and recruit kobold spam with any extra gold.

Form lines on good terrain backed by healers and focus only on defense; often it's better to just have a unit do nothing rather than attack and lose HP in the process, especially during the day. It's inevitable that you'll lose a lot of units, even veterans, but don't worry too much because the next few scenarios are quite easy and offer plenty of XP to level new veterans. Just try to keep the loyal dwarves alive, since they'll save you a lot of money in later scenarios.

What makes this scenario much more difficult than it should be is that the allied leader will sometimes charge into danger to attack if a drake is in her range. You can try to prevent this by mousing over her to view her movement range, and then covering the hexes she is likely to attack from with your own units. [If it gets really infuriating, you can cheat and take control of the allied side in Wesnoth 1.12 by typing :debug, then :droid 2.]

S5 Forest Ablaze

• Objectives: Defeat the drake leader.

This is a pretty easy breather scenario compared to the last two. Units which can move quickly through forest, such as sylphs, dwarves and ethereal orbs will be most helpful here. The main challenge is surviving the initial daytime assault of the drakes: form a line with durable units like dwarves in front, and it also helps to have a few expendable recruits for distraction.

S6 Council with the King

Story.

S7 Rise of the Dragons

• Objectives: Kill Shek'har.
• Note: You have control over the allied Aragwaithi side. They do not come with you so they are completely expendable.

This is a relatively easy scenario, since you can use the allied Aragwaithi units as cannon fodder (just don't get Abhai or Aracyn killed since their death causes a defeat). You'll be facing mostly drakes and a few undead, so spam spearmen with the Aragwaithi and use Abhai's level 4 leadership on them to do tremendous damage to the drakes.

There aren't many villages so don't overrecruit with Myra's side (give all the villages to Myra's side). As usual sylphs and their advancements are the best units for damaging drakes. You also temporarily control Maat, an extremely overpowered unit with level 5 leadership, great resistances and very powerful attacks, so use her to lead your units and slow powerful enemies.

Once the main army is gone, you can march into the fortress and kill Shek'har. The other two leaders will just flee when attacked, though Assix will leave behind some high level undead when fleeing. After this scenario Dvalin will leave for a few scenarios and you won't be able to recruit new dwarves during that time (though you can still recall your veterans), so you may wish to recruit some extras now.

S8 The Kalian of Garet-Desh

Story.

S9 Bitter Return

• Objectives: Defeat the enemy leader.

This is an easy experience gathering scenario, as you will face only level 1 undead. You may now recruit Aragwaithi, but their pierce damage is pretty useless against the undead and trolls in the next few scenarios, and you will have a much better opportunity to level fresh Aragwaithi recruits in Scenario 12.

To save on upkeep, just recruit a wisp or two on turn 1 to village grab, then move Myra to the center keeps and recall from there. Watch out for the skeleton riders and their charge attack; they are the biggest threats so try to take them out first. Focus on getting some experience for your two new hero units, who do arcane damage for this scenario only. This scenario is also a perfect opportunity to level some brazier imps.

S10 The Wilderness

• Objectives: Kill the enemy leader, then move Myra to the cave entrance in the southwest mountains.

This is another relatively easy experience gathering scenario. Groups of wild animals (wolves, ogres, scorpions and mudcrawlers) will periodically spawn all over the map, and they will all fight each other so will mostly leave you alone. Due to the spawns you will probably lose most of your villages, so don't recruit a ton of units or you'll end up very negative on income. It helps to get a Razorbird for scout out the map.

Head southeast across the river, where you'll encounter a horde of level 1 undead - this is another great opportunity to level fire elementals (which are also the best units to use against the scorpions and mudcrawlers). The enemy leader is far in the southeast; once you defeat him you can move Myra to the exit in the southwest (marked by a red icon), or if your income is not too bad you could stick around for a while and kill some wildlife for the experience.

S11 Legend of the Water Dragon

• Objectives: Find the Fountain of Life (with any unit), then move Myra back to the starting keep. (Note: Do not move Myra back onto the keep before discovering the fountain, or you won't be able to end the scenario due to a bug.)

You'll be fighting trolls and later undead. Leveled fire elementals, dwarves and kobolds will be the most useful units here with their good damage types, high HP and cave mobility.

There are 3 paths from the starting keep:

West: After a bit, the path splits into an upper and lower path: The upper path curves to the west and eventually leads to a fight with the green trolls (it's a long hike, so send your faster units this way). The lower path is just a dead end with some villages (just grab them with a wisp).

Southeast: This is where the main battle takes place, so send most units this way. You'll be facing green trolls coming from the left and blue trolls from the right.

East: There is practically nothing here, just a village and river in the east leading south where there are some water villages and blue trolls. Just send a wisp to explore.

Make sure you are ready before moving to the fountain (the light blue lake in the very southern edge of the map), because several things will happen:

• High level undead will appear all over the cave. Make sure none of your units are wandering off on their own.
• A powerful saurian leader and some guards will appear in the southwest cave (the one with 5 villages). Make sure your units are not in this area or they'll probably get trapped.
• The blue trolls in the southeast get a bunch of gold; you may want to kill the leader beforehand.
• Your hero units will automatically move to the fountain, and several saurian flankers will appear in the tunnel. Some kobolds will also appear to help you. Slow the flankers with Veela and Alenya, and use Ravyan's leadership on the kobolds and have them pound the flankers.

The saurians and green trolls in the southwest will mostly distract one another, so focus on clearing away the blue trolls and undead so that Myra has a clear path back to the keep.

S12 Burning Revenge

• Objectives: Kill Lados with Myra.

A new captain unit, Prince Varthan, will join you, but he'll only be with you up to Scenario 15 so whether you want to take the trouble to level him is up to you.

Spam Aragwaithi spearmen and archer recruits (mostly spearmen, since they're much more durable) and fill up the outer walls. When the drakes attack from 20% defense water, use the spearmen/archers backed by leadership to demolish them. Move Myra, Varthan and Ravyan behind your lines to give leadership to as many units as possible. There will be very high casualties but you should also be able to level up several spearmen in the process.

Remember to have Myra deal the killing blow to Lados, or he'll just heal to full.

S13 Twilight of the Kingdoms

• Objectives: Resist until the end of turns.
• Notes:
  • Turn 6: Allied elves arrive in the keep southeast of King Dashien.
  • Turn 9: Allied trolls arrive in the keep northeast of King Dashien.
  • Turn 12: Both drake leaders get some reinforcements, and the elven allies also get some reinforcements.
  • Turn 15: Dvalin returns with 400 gold, and you can now recruit level 2 dwarves.
  • Turn 16: Another enemy leader arrives in the southeast.

The easiest way to play this scenario is to just stay inside the city and defend it (if you get too close to the enemy leaders, they will get a large amount of reinforcements). The first thing to do is start stealing all of your ally's villages. Send wisps in all directions to village grab. Try not to recall above your village limit in order to maximize your income.

The allied Aragwaithi will mostly keep the first wave of drakes occupied during the second day; retreat your troops to the inner walls and engage them during the night. By now you should have a mix of damage dealers (leveled spearmen and sylphs) and tanks (dwarvish lords, stone titans) so with the help of the allied elves and trolls acting as cannon fodder the first wave of drakes shouldn't be too difficult.

The second wave of drakes is more problematic because they arrive during daytime and the allied units will be dead by then, but you should have plenty of cash from high income and Dvalin's 400 gold. One approach is to spam dwarvish steelclads and line them up along the walls to delay the drakes - they can take plenty of damage and distract large amounts of drakes even during the day, and the surviving ones can be recalled for only 20 gold next scenario.

S14 The Sky Dragon Descends

• Survive for until turn 22 (18 turns initially), then use Maat to defeat Svarballi.
• Notes:
  • On turn 20 Svarballi will arrive in the southwest.
  • On turn 22 Maat gets a huge powerup, and all of your units will leave except for the shield guards (including Dashien) and Aracyn.

Note that this scenario features an unusual time of day schedule: Lawful units get a slight damage penalty during stormy day, a slight bonus during stormy dawn and night, and a huge penalty during stormy night (the reverse is true for chaotic units). So you'll want to be more passive during dawn and dusk, and very aggressive during the night.

You have control of the allied Aragwaithi and dwarf sides, and any veterans from these sides (besides shield guards) will be added to your recall list so they are worth preserving. This is also the only time when you'll be able to directly recruit the higher level units, so it's a good opportunity for getting some already leveled Windsong/Aragwaithi/Dwarves onto your recall list. Aragwaithi Pikemen and Dwarvish Steelclads are the most useful recruits (it's more cost effective to recruit the level 2s instead of level 3s, and you should be able to level plenty of them in this scenario).

For Myra, get plenty of tanking units (Stone Titans, Lava Behemoths) and plenty of Ethereal Orbs for healing (note that your orbs can heal the allied units too). It's also a good opportunity to recruit and level some Windsong Savants, which are extremely effective against drakes. Windsong Envoys with their cold damage are also good, and can reinforce anywhere with their teleport ability. Another thing to note is that after this scenario you won't be able to recruit new elementals for a while (until Scenario 22) so you mainly want to make sure you have enough healers (4-5 ethereal orbs is a good number).

The drakes won't arrive for a few turns so you could wait for a bit before recalling/recruiting to let your income work. It's better to defend along the moat than the outer wall, because it's less area to defend and the drakes in the water have 20% defense rather than 40% in the chasm. The biggest assault will come from the western side. Try to have the shield guards take most of the hits initially, since they won't come with you anyway. The biggest threat will come from the Fire Dragons; use Maat to heavily damage and slow them. If you form a solid line on the walls and constantly rotate and heal, the drake assault will die out by around turn 12. Getting close to the enemy leaders causes them to get a large amount of gold, so it's best to just stay in the city and defend.

On Turn 22, all your units except Maat and the shield guards will leave and you'll have to use Maat to defeat Svarballi. Try to use the shield guards to distract the drakes while Maat hits Svarballi with her arcane attack.

S15 Farewell

• Move to the center of the two rivers with Jevyan (the area around 45, 19)

Every single veteran on your recall list will be recalled at the beginning. Every few turns, groups of high level drakes and saurians will spawn in the surrounding forest. The most difficult part of this scenario is the beginning, when they'll all come for you at once. Don't advance too far in the beginning, and just stay back and let them come to you. By far the most useful units here are dwarvish lords and leveled sylphs for their mobility in forests.

Once you've dealt with the initial wave, send small groups in each direction backed by ethereal orbs to hold off the new spawns while some units escort Jevyan to the east - there aren't any enemy spawns in the eastern part of the map so it should be a pretty safe trip.

S15b Farewell, Part 2

• Objectives: Move Myra to the city's center (marked by a red icon)

This is mostly a cutscene scenario. You'll get surrounded by a bunch of fire elementals in the beginning, but they won't attack so they're not a threat. Your leaders should be able to kill about one fire elemental each per turn, so they'll soon run out.