LotI Walkthrough-Part1-Chapter03
Part I, Embracing the Darkness, Chapter 3, Shadows of the Night
Generally
[WHU] Recruiting and recalling work differently than normal in this chapter. Be sure to read and understand the introductory material at the beginning of the first scenario. Villages will often provide no income, check the status table (Alt-s, then Scenario Settings) at the start of each scenario.
Contents
Thirst for Adventures
[WHU] Recruits are not really necessary here, and if Efraim and Lethalia are fast, they'll just slow you down. If you do recruit, keep them back and have Lethalia and Efraim protect them from the first batch of wolves and mists. The town "to the east" is actually to southeast, the first time the road forks follow the southeast branch with your fastest leader. North of the town is a swamp, kill the lich. You will be given the opportunity to go on an optional scenario, why not?
Bandits (Optional Scenario)
[WHU] Recruit a couple elves, give/craft them some gear, and try to get them some experience. Use heroes to block enemies to protect your new elves, and Argan to provide leadership.
Journey South
[WHU] A long scenario, without much opportunity to use low level units. About ten tiles southeast of the mouth of the path through the mountains is a small orc camp. You may want to send a few heroes over the mountains to take it out. I've always chosen to help the woman which gives a nice reward, but I don't know what the other options do. After you enter the cave, there is a lake full of souls to eat. On the west side of the lake is a chest of gold. One leader can easily clear the path on land of the enemy undead.
[WHU] Following the path south you find a cavern. There are trolls to the west, which provide what IMO is one of the toughest fights in LotI unless you can get to the opening where you fight two on one in your favor. It's no place for your junior units, they can safely remain heading south. Fighting the trolls is not strictly necessary if you just keep moving south. If you choose to go west, look for the entrance to a secret passage to the south, there's a piece of loot in there that is weakly protected.
[WHU] Shortly after exiting the cave there is a gap in the mountains to the west which leads to a path to a secret scenario. It is quite difficult, but doable and gives you access to some dwarves, which is nice, especially if you're building up a collection of axes. If you chose not to fight the trolls and only sent a unit or two through the secret passage, this might be their only hope of survival (unless you sent Lethalia alone, who can fly to a tile inaccessible to the trolls). The alternative is just to cruise easily down to the southern border. Either way you should finish at least 100 turns early -- with no early finish bonus.
Mining (Optional Scenario)
[WHU] Time to recall or possibly recruit some units. The turn limit is very tight here if you don't have overwhelming force. Your enemies, aside from the four liches, are weak, but you have a lot of work to do and a lot of map to cover so you want plenty of troops to clear the way for your heroes. In the northeast you'll be facing goblins, Lethalia and some elf markmen should have no trouble there. The rest will be undead, so arcane and impact attacks are key. While you are in a cave, most of the paths are covered with roads. This is a good scenario to get some XP for lower level units. Spread your forces so that you are advancing along all paths at once, and try to make sure your heroes move as much as possible each turn, while still blocking enemy units from teaming up on your low level units.
Siege
[WHU] Gold, or XP? A fast leader can race down and get behind the orc leader, step into his castle, and win around turn 4, picking up a nice early finish bonus, but leaving a lot of XP on the table. Your allies are actually useful, so you could join them in a straight up assault.
[WHU] I like a hybrid approach, where I send a few heroes to stand in the orc castle so he can't recruit very fast and then pick them off a few at a time. You don't get much gold that way, but it's safe, especially if you want to distribute XP to junior units, at least until your ally joins you in the castle. I don't think this is a very wise approach, but it's fun, especially if you mix in some explosive slow attacks to really frustrate the orcs.