LotI Walkthrough-Part1-Chapter04

Part I, Embracing the Darkness, Chapter 4, To Destroy the Wesnothian Empire

Generally

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He Came Down from the Mountains

[WHU] The enemy leader will call for reinforcements when you approach, so you might want to make sure you start a turn from a position where you can end up next to him in one turn. Or not, it's not like his forces can stop you.

[Thrash] Enemy ZoC is the only thing that will slow you down. You have access to your full item storage; consider something that will give you skirmish if you are impatient.

Into Our Frozen Land

[WHU] Gather villages with Ekrathan, keeping him away from the action. Charge and kill the nearest enemy leader with Efraim. Proceed directly into the lake, ignoring enemies unless they pose a threat to Ekrathan. Pick an enemy leader and kill him. The other will probably die before you can get to him.

[Thrash] If one explores the lake, a bunch of allied undead will appear. Note you are going to get to recall a couple units from chapter 2 at the start of the next scenario, so before you finish this one, you might want to go back and note a couple of good fighting units.

Revolution Begins

[WHU] Efraim can simply charge north and force his way into the castle. Keep Ekrathan alive if possible. When enemies approach, take a look at their stats, they are a lot more dangerous than they look.

[Thrash] I held back and fought enemies as they came to me, then advanced once the secondary leaders quit recruiting. The guards around the city will come alive when you get within their movement range. I triggered them to attack one or two at a time. The scenario ends when Efriam goes into or next to the keep in the center of main city.

Doomsday Omens

[WHU] You pick up a few loyal, level 4 units here, so make sure to protect them. Gear up the overlord and nightprowler and send the gryphon to collect villages. Recruit a druid, a lord, and a sorceress (you won't need them now, but you'll be glad you did soon) and follow the river into the mountains, with Lethalia in the lead. Once you enter the cave, send Lethalia along the river path to the east while your elven units retreat, drawing the undead into the woods (not necessarily to fight, you're just getting them out of Lethalia's way while also keeping the elves alive, and maybe picking up some help from your otherwise worthless allies). Make use of Lethalia's penetrates to force her way into the eastern passage. If she gets way ahead of the rest of your units, that's just fine, you want her to get into the cave and past the initial wave of undead before it gets too big.

[WHU] This scenario is rather difficult if you try to fight your way forward into the cave, as a pack of undead cluster at the entrance to the cave. If Lethalia has skirmisher (and fast, of course), it is more or less trivial as long as you move her quickly enough that she can enter the eastern cave passage toward victory before the undead start to amass above the cave entrance.

Meeting of the Ancients

[WHU] Recall a good healer like a faerie incarnation, and a powerful unit with arcane and a lot of HP. Run. Enemies are coming from all directions, and they are coming fast. Get into the cave to the north, kill the necromancer, and then protect the village and the cave mouth with your strongest units. Once you fight off the first batch to the north, move forward and bring Lethalia to a good defensive position, such as one tile north of the village.

[WHU] After another small batch of undead is dispatched, and your rear is secure, clear the way for Lethalia and send her along the cart path. Remember, your mission is not to kill all the enemies, and you will often be up against the turn limit. You might have time to fetch the item out of the river. You don't have to get all the way to the lich, just close.

[Thrash] You get to recall another two units from Chapter 2 at the start of this scenario. Your objective is in the NE and there are three paths to get there: the southern cave, the northern cave, or through the outdoors in the center. You'll need to go through some caves in any case, so some powerful dwarves are good recruits. There is no gold carry over, so spend away.

Castle of the Wicked

[WHU] Pay attention to the lit floors. Some enemies will be lawful, and some chaotic, so use the lit tiles to your advantage accordingly. The enemies are powerful, so exercise a little caution with your supporting units, and use corridors to avoid being surrounded. Most of the enemies will be killed by Efraim on defense. Remember that your mission is to move north, not kill everyone.

[Thrash] Main challenge here is not to get mobbed and lose on turns.

Nemesis

[WHU] Easy enough, especially since I knew it was coming and stripped all Argan's gear after the big dragon fight.

An Army Is Born

[WHU] 50 orcs in 15 turns? How's that going to happen? Well, when you kill an orc, it makes an undead that is ready to attack. Use explosive slow on a bunch of orcs, find one that is injured and kill it. When determining what type of unit to spawn, consider its location. For example, if it is right next to a damaged orc grunt (no ranged attack), choose skeleton archer and then kill the orc with your new skeleton archer. Repeat as often as possible. When in doubt, skeleton archer is probably the best choice (though do have some skeletons and ghosts), soulless aren't that useful.

[WHU] Lethalia having skimisher is handy here, having radiation is just too much fun. The first turn is a great time to have Lethalia take the Potion of Authority.

[Thrash] My default unit is a ghost due to their speed and their draining, which makes them tough against any enemy without a flaming ranged attack, but I agree with WHU that one should take advantage of what is nearby to attack.

The First Blow

[WHU] Same undead spawning as the last scenario, but much, much harder. The turn limit is not your friend. Hopefully, Lethalia is fast. You want to get her onto the center keep as quickly as possible. Remember, when you kill a unit an undead will spawn, often right where you meant to move Lethalia using her penetrates. Make sure the unit you kill can move out of her way. Ideally, she will kill the unit one tile north of the enemy leader and step into the castle on turn 2. Keep Lethalia in the thick of the battle in the center. When the prince shows up, pound his units with explosive slow.

[WHU] The southeast leader can be troublesome. In a conventional attack, he always takes more troops than I'd expect, and any troops you commit to him probably won't be able to make it to any other battles due to the turn limit. Send a doppleganger to help several skeletons, particularly archers. Once the battle feels like it's going to be a win, start spawning ghosts and send them west. When the leader is dead, send the doppleganger after the southwest leader. Remember the turn limit and your mission, she is needed elsewhere.

[WHU] The other doppleganger should head northwest, killing that leader before turning east to take out the north leader. I usually send a handful of ghosts north at the beginning, then west, keeping a unit on the village and just generally harassing the northern forces to keep them mostly out of the fight. If you get lucky, you can storm his castle and sit there so he can't recruit.

[WHU] Making use of rivers is crucial here. When attacking, always consider whether you could move forward first. It's going to be a huge battle with slow units, and overwhelming force is key when you're raising the dead. Concentrate on getting kills quickly over distributing XP and the like. When the prince shows up, check out his units carefully.

[WHU] As things start to wind down (it may not seem like it, but they will), consider advancing your undead to Chocobones, and then get those somewhere safe for use in a later scenario.

[Thrash] Seconding WHU, undead that you create can easily get in your way and you need to make sure they have a way to get out of the way. On turn 7, a bunch of demons will appear at the west edge of the map. Don't let dopplegangers get too separate from troops, they aren't as tough as Lethalia.

[Thrash] A strategy that worked for me was to send the first doppelgänger SE with a bunch of ghosts to take out the SE leader. Lethalia and the other doppelgänger take out the central enemy keep (it's very handy to have both of them to take out the leader). Then you basically hunker down and take the enemy assault, including the demons. Lethalia and the doppelgänger need to focus on key L3 enemy and then the fireball-throwing demons. Everything else gets taken down by waves of your undead. When the SE leader is beaten, that doppelgänger and any ghosts (nothing else is fast enough) head west to take out the SW leader. As soon as you can spare any units in the center, start sending them NW and N. Leathalia and the second doppelgänger head NW and N respectively as soon as all the L3s and deamons in the center are killed and let the undead mop up.

Dealing with Trolls

[WHU] You want to reach the troll leader in the northwest corner as quickly as possible, while killing as few trolls as you can. In the items menu there is an option, "Select weapons for retaliation" which may help reduce the number of trolls you kill on defense.

[Thrash] Equip Efriam to be fast and non-lethal, for example Mountain Trek boots and a Cunctator's Sword. On turn 5 a bunch of demons will appear outside, if you recruit a bunch of ghosts, they, with a Doppleganger can hold them off. They won't reach trolls until turn 10 or so. Main challenge is for Efriam not to get mobbed by Trolls. Killing six trolls is not too many to win the scenario.

Invasion

[WHU] Did you disable Efraim's weapons for retaliation in the last scenario? Did you remember to re-enable them?

[WHU] You will be given the option to trade, as many as possible, one skeletal dragon for five level one undead. I've always taken the option, so I don't know what is best. You will be up against mages with explosive attacks, so you don't want your units bunched up. You will also be up against silver mages who actually use their teleport ability, so you probably want to gather as many villages as quickly as possible.

[WHU] I have always started by recalling a lot of my most powerful units (mostly doppelgangers, and NOT Skellie as I don't want him getting lost in the crowd of dragons and dying on me) and heading west, while the dragons are left to die at the hands of the mages. If you stripped your recalls of gear earlier, don't forget to update them now. I then sent a couple doppelgangers and a leader south to defeat the prince, again, while the rest of my powerful units sweep east to clobber the mages. This approach will no longer work as of version 3.2.7d (we fixed the glitch).

[Thrash] Possible to have Beelezub's monument to the West (at 11,12). I sent Lethalia south to kill SE leaders with a few select tough units and sent the rest of my forces to the southwest to help with the demons. Watch out for Silver Mages teleporting into your midst. Once Lethalia finishes the SE leader, everyone goes west to kill Beelzebub, then finish SW leader. Note Beelzebub seems to count as an enemy leader, so the scenario doesn’t end if he is alive.

Bloodbath

[WHU] This is supposed to be hopeless, but someone actually beat it.

[WHU] Send any of your army you care about to the southwest corner. Recruit constantly, there's no gold carryover, and send a wall of defenders to slow the attackers. Chocobones are also nice here, they can hang back and then charge mages or run in to pick up dropped loot. Your new recruits will not last beyond this scenario, even if they survive, so think twice about giving them any gear, and use them to protect the rest. Lethalia can advance and explosive slow the enemy, being just a little careful not to get surrounded. Hold on, keep recruiting, protect Mal Keshar and Stormrider, and it'll turn out okay. Or try to beat it.

[WHU] At this point, you probably have a lot of units on the recall list that you are never going to recall. It's best just to purge them now. You'll thank me later.

[Thrash] This scenario ends at the start of turn 11 (if you don't beat it, which I haven't done, but have come close). I attack hard and harvest a lot of XP. On turn 10 Zortheus (a 400 HP badass) appears in Northern keep.

The Way of Assassins

[WHU] Spread out, search the map, kill anything that moves. Actually, there's no early finish bonus, so make that kill everything that moves.

[Thrash] Lord Revan is just southeast of start. Lord Roth is south at 12,26. Lord Kartyn is east at 41,11 with some demons. Villages produce no income so just go for XP harvesting. Efriam and doppelgängers seem invincible. On turn 5, something happens… not sure what.

The Kingslayer

[WHU] Send Efraim north ALONE. Break the other units into two teams and explore. Once Efraim triggers and dispatches the surprise enemy and the southern part of the map is cleared, the teams can move north and then west, while Efraim heads east. No early finish bonus, don't leave any XP on the table.

The Library

[WHU] If you tend to click through the opening dialog, you might not notice that Lethalia starts on a keep, where she can recall some units to explore the library. It is almost impossible to collect all the items and finish within the turn limit without help. Four or five units is more than enough, send Lethalia west and a couple others north. Block the passage south with a powerful unit backed by a healer, or charge down and kill the leader. Explore everything.

[Thrash] I did not notice the keep, so just played with the doppelgangers and yes, the time limit is very tight - need to split up and approach northern room from both directions to keep from getting bottled up (enemy will go after Lethalia and ignore the doppelgangers for the most part). Lethalia needs to head east and then to the northern room and let doppelgangers pick up books.

Lost in Space

[WHU] Recruit/recall about three units you want to give experience, low level is just fine. They will go just north of the castle to where a portal emerges. Recall several heavy hitters, including at least one flyer. After Lethalia clears out the initial wave that comes through the portal, surround it with your three junior troops. Send Lethalia and a couple quick support units across the bridge, then northwest, picking up villages on the way. Send the rest of the power troops carefully to the southeast to take out the prince and his forces. The prince's troops are tougher than they look, in part because explosive slow doesn't work on them.

[WHU] Once the prince and his lackeys are dispatched, send one unit to collect all the villages on this section of the map, while the rest head up to the bridge. Advance onto the bridge, standing on the portals so the enemies have to spawn in the air, where you have a 100% chance of hitting them with most attacks. Send a flyer or two around them and follow the bridge southeast, grabbing every village in sight. Meanwhile, Lethalia and company travel through the cave, across a bridge, some water, and then down to the southeast corner. Since there's no early finish, wait until the last turn to approach Efraim with Lethalia. Don't forget to check in every turn with the units you left behind.

[Thrash] I sent several strong units with Lethalia SE to take out Prince and demons. Efriam is south of the desert.

Any Means Necessary

[WHU] You actually don't have to kill all the leaders, you only have to touch the mage leader. But that's no excuse for not killing every single thing that moves first. I choose allies over undead, the allies are pretty good at soaking up some damage, and distracting the enemies so that they end up doing most of the fighting in the moat. I might recall a few fast units on the first turn, but mostly I race ahead and do my recalls in the ring around where my allies reside. This looks like a battle you'll want to recruit/recall heavily for, but it's not. You want enough to push back if the enemy happens to start to break through part of your ally's line, but once most of the blood has been spilled you won't need much to roll to victory.

[WHU] On the east side, most of the enemies will be hard hitting melee impact, so recall accordingly. On the west you have mostly pierce, and in the center a lot of arcane. Move forward slowly at first, letting your ally do most of the work. Actually, it would be kind of nice to let all the allied units get killed (so they don't strike the final blow that ends the scenario) and then wait until the last turn to strike the killing blow to maximize gold carryover. I use a lot of explosive and/or whirlwind slow, and incinerate if possible. Just keep pushing forward, dopplegangers were nice for that.

[Thrash] I also chose allies. Note you own the keeps close to enemy, teleporting/moving quickly to keeps and recruiting from there can allow you to quickly grab the shoreline. Attacking Pandemonius ends the scenario (though it does look like you have to survive the attack). Before finishing un-equip all recalls as they won’t be available at the start of next chapter, and remove weak units from recall list so Soulgate in next chapter works well.

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