HOMM 3: Strategy on Dragon Slayer 2 "Rust Dragons"
Quebec Dragon
You have the choice between this scenario and another one called Faerie
Dragons although you'll have to complete both by the end. I think
starting out with this one, the one selected by default, is easier.
This map is apparently of normal difficulty (if you check out a
savegame) but the player difficulty is at expert. The objective of this
large scenario is to flag all the mines and doing so within 6 months.
The majority of them were taken over by Rust Dragons. On my first play,
I finished this on month 5, week 1, day 5.
Starting Bonus: Depending on what you have in remaining troops from the
last scenario, you should take either the 1 Titan or the 4 Naga Queens.
I took the 4 Naga Queens because I was continuing the game where I had
taken 3 Titans. If I was continuing the game where I had taken the Tome
of Earth (and so no Titans), I would have been more inclined to pick the
Titan.
Week 1
1) My own starting army was comprised of 3 Titans, 11 Naga Queens and 86
Iron Golems. I decided to leave them all with Dracon. If you read and
followed my strategy on "Crystal Dragons", then it is likely you will
have a lot more troops available to you. If I go roughly by what I had
left, you could have around 25 Enchanters, 85 Iron Golems, 85 Master
Gremlins, 6 Naga Queens, 21 Master Genies and 221 Obsidian Gargoyles. If
that had been the case for me, my strategy would have been different in
Rust Dragons. I would surely have formed 2 different armies. I would
likely have kept all shooters with Dracon (Titan, Enchanters, Master
Gremlins) and given the flyers/walkers (Iron Golems, Naga Queens, Master
Genies and Obsidian Gargoyles to another hero. Perhaps I'd have given an
extra 4th stack to boost Dracon's army. It is even possible I might have
split the armies according to speed: Titans, Enchanters and Master
Genies for Dracon with the rest of the troops to another hero. Based on
what I did in the next scenarios and how effective a
Titan/Enchanter/Master Genie combo is when it is led by a strong
spellcaster, I even think that might be the best way to do things.
2) Not really knowing the layout and more specifically where the towns
might be (I had the skill in Air Magic but not the View Air spell),
Dracon wandered around the town for most of the first month flagging the
mines in my home territory.
3) I guess that it might have been logical to assume that those stone
roads, one going west and the other going north might have led to other
towns and in fact that was true. I would have followed them with
secondary heroes but those same roads were blocked by lots of Master
Genies and I wanted Dracon's army to be stronger before going too far
from home. A more aggressive player might potentially take those 2
neutral towns with the 2 split armies at the end of week 1.
4) I do get the impression it would be much less risky and less severe
in casualties if the player waited until week 3 or 4 to try taking one
of those towns.
5) Here were my Tower builds in week 1:
1) Mage Guild (the old standby for day 1 so heroes can get spellbooks
and in the Tower's Case it is also a requirement for the Mage Tower)
2) Golem Factory
3) Mage Tower
4) Golden Pavilion
5) Altar of Wishes
6) Citadel
7) Castle (OR Cloud Temple). I recommend the Castle.
If you had taken the Altar of Wishes as starting bonus, you might have
potentially built both the Castle and Cloud Temple in week 1. That would
have meant 3 more Giants for you (2 from week 1 plus 1 extra from week
2)
6) Buy 3 heroes and have them pick out the scattered piles of resources
all around so Dracon (and your other main hero if you have one) can
concentrate on the more important business of fighting and flagging
mines.
7) You are playing as Tower so naturally Gem Ponds should be liberated
a.s.a.p. It is the resource you need most.
8) So what is the best way to beat those Rust Dragons? First you have to
know that no matter how good you are, they will always get first turn
with their speed of 17. By comparison, your fastest troops are the
Master Genies and Titans at only speed 11.
9) I had the opportunity to try various tactics and spells against those
Rust Dragons while clearing out mines. Here are some of those that
proved to be the most useful in the early game.
a) I liked to split off my weakest unit (in my case the Iron Golem) in
one big stack and as many stacks of one I could to fill out the empty
spots with, so those Rusts would waste their attacks on them. It did not
work all the time but I think it's a good tactic.
b) Curing your Titan(s) might be a great way to keep it (them) alive
especially if you have a good water magic skill.
c) I used the old reliable spells of Blind and Lightning often.
d) Summoning Elementals to provide an extra target can save your real
troops.
e) So can Clone for that matter.
10) Just a little reminder that a few Rust Dragons means 1 to 4 Rust
Dragons. Against wimpier troops, it might not matter, but against
Rusties, it does. Fighting against 1 and fighting against 4 is a
different matter.
11) Try to keep your spell points up! Without spells, your army will
melt like a snowball in summer.
12) Have your secondary heroes pick out-of-the-way resource piles
Week 2
13) Here were my builds in week 2:
1) Marketplace (hired an extra hero too)
2) Blacksmith
3) Capitol
4) Cloud Temple
5) Resource Silo (you get 1 more Gem if you build this one day before
;-)
6) Sculptor Wings
7) Mage Guild Level 2
14) I was still taking mines in the snow. If you only have Tower troops
in your army, you'll have no movement penalty while threading through
the snow. It's because it's their native terrain.
15) I'm not sure if it was a fluke but I did see Rust Dragons flaming
each other like the dumb Dragons of HOMM2 used to do.
16) When you face 3 or 4 Rust Dragons, casting Summon Elemental is good.
17) There was a squire following Dracon around.
Week 3
18) Build up the Mage Guild to level 5 for Dracon.
19) When Dracon is back to learn spells, buy all the Mages (20) and
upgrade them to Enchanters.
20) The problem I had was how to keep those alive against the Rust
Dragons.
21) Any Master Gremlins you hire will just die in the first few battles,
they're only useful as sacrificial baits. This being said, I did hire a
bunch of them with left-over gold.
22) The southeast quadrant was pretty well explored.
Week 4
23) Since I had only 1 decent army and did not know much of the layout,
I had to decide between going towards the southwest or northeast corner
with Dracon. If you have 2 armies (depending on your starting troops),
the choice is easier, you simply follow the two different paths on the
paved roads.
24) My second objective for this week was to try upgrading the Cloud
Temple and getting more Titans to Dracon.
25) Use single-unit Master Gremlins as baits.
26) Against Genie stacks, use either Slow or Blind. Either one is fine.
27) I was tempted to trade resources for gold but the exchange rate with
just one town was just too bad. I'm glad I waited.
28) Start upgrading your dwellings in your main town except for the Mage
Tower..
29) I suspected there were more Towers at the end of the roads and it
turns out I was right. Of course, with the spell View Air at expert
level , I would not have even needed to guess.
30) I took that second town on week 4, day 4.
31) Your builds in the second town should be: Lookout Tower, Tavern,
Town Hall, then work towards the City Hall.
32) There is a Trading Post northeast of the Tower in the southwest
corner. I kept a hero there in permanence because it makes trades as if
you had 5 marketplaces.
33) There's a Dark Blue Keymaster's Tent I wanted to visit but it was
protected by a horde of Archmagi. With my current army, it would have
cost me too many troops so I decided to wait for reinforcements.
34) You will also notice a swarm of Archmagi protecting an unknown
scroll. I don't need to tell you that this would also wait a while :-)
To see what it gives you, go to paragraph 66.
Month 2, week 1 (week 5 overall)
35) A little north of the southwest Tower, you will find a Seer Hut
asking for the Diplomat's Ring (that's an item carried over from
scenario 1: Crystal Dragons). The seer will give you a rather lousy
Collar of Conjuring (spells last 1 one more turn) as a reward. I did
guess from an event earlier that this Collar might serve in some other
Seer quest later on or as a "key" that would open up some kind of
barrier.
36) I thought of using Mass Slow and Mass Haste against the Rust Dragons
(I did not even have Earth Magic yet so it was Mass Haste). It gave
Dracon's troops the first turn in the second round. It was excellent to
minimize casualties.
37) Brought troops by hero chain to Dracon. I did not buy Gargoyles or
Master Gremlins. (was thinking of perhaps using those troops as the base
of a second army going north)
38) Dracon went for that horde of Archmagi protecting the Dark Blue
tent. Against them: the spells Air Shield, Forgetfulness, Blind, Mass
Slow, Mass Haste and Berzerk would be best. Unfortunately I did not
have the 2 spells that would have been most useful: Forgetfulness and
Berzerk (wizards just don't like spells associated with the Fire school
of magic). If I had Forgetfulness at expert level, I might have gone for
the Swarm of Archmagi right away. With Berzerk, I would have also
thought about it.
Month 2, Week 2 (week 6 overall) and beyond
39) Start building up the Mage Guild in your second town as soon as the
City Hall is built. This strategy would go for almost all new Towers
taken in this scenario.
40) I managed to get Town Portal in the second town.
41) I ported to the home town to get more troops. If you don't have Town
Portal, use another hero chain.
42) The objective of the scenario is to flag all the mines, however the
purple adversary is in your way. Going by my old motto of crushing the
opposition and then completing the objectives in a more leisurely
fashion, I wanted to strike early at purple. If you want to forget about
eliminating purple and just flag all the mines, I would strongly suggest
killing that Swarm of Archmagi and getting the scroll behind it.
43) Here are some tips and considerations to make Tower armies win
against Stronghold armies in pitched battle.
a) The Tower heroes are likely to be much more powerful in magic than
the might-oriented Barbarians and Battlemages. Use this advantage to its
fullest by dazzing your opponent with expensive fancy spells.
b) Full roster against full roster, you will have 3 shooters against his
2. You have the advantage in this department so let the enemy come to
you.
c) Mass Slow and Mass Haste can be very useful if they're timed well.
(I'm also a big fan of Chain Lightning as an opening spell ;-)
d) Instead of leaving empty slots in your army, use singleton Master
Genies to cast beneficial spells on your shooters.
e) Thunderbirds can reach you in one turn and perhaps block a shooter.
This is annoying. Have your Nagas strike them first, followed by the
Obsidian Gargoyles who can absorb the retaliation (I don't worry too
much about losing them) and then the Master Genies.
f) Have your shooters shoot the enemy shooters concentrating on the most
damaging one first. I also like to finish the Thunderbirds so there's
none left for the second round.
g) If you don't want to bother with Mass Slow and Mass Haste on the
first round (I think Mass Slow is more likely to be dispelled if the
enemy can do it), you could always go with the good old Blind to
incapacitate a dangerous stack such as the Behemoths or the Wolf
Raiders. Again the problem is in timing it well so it is not dispelled.
If your power is high, a good old lightning bolt on the Hobgoblins or
Wolf Raiders (who strike hard but have relatively low hit points) is a
decent spell to cast but naturally you should go for more damaging
spells if you can.
h) Do remember that shooters do half damage beyond the 10 hex range. So
on the second round, it might be more urgent to deal with approaching
grunt troops.
i) I personally like to soak up retaliations with Gargoyles and Golems
if I have them. It's losing the top four troops (starting with Archmagi)
that bothers me more.
j) Never forget Mass Precision when you fight with the Tower...
k) I personally don't use it much but Mass Weakness might potentially
reduce the damage inflicted upon your troops by 30%. It is especially
good against Stronghold armies because their attack skills (their
speciality) will usually be much higher than the defense skills of your
Tower troops.
l) On the second round, I will usually pick targets by which ones can
reach me first and do the most damage. I personally hate letting those
Wolf Raiders having 2 attacks.
m) Ogres are almost always the last Stronghold stack I will kill.
44) Be very careful of seemingly-unprotected mines in the northwest
corner that are not flagged. A certain Crystal Cavern comes to mind
especially. In my case, I was lucky and a secondary hero stumbled upon
that ambush.
45) With a previously visited Hut of Magi, I had a general idea of where
purple was: in the northwest corner. I also thought I would only have to
take about 3 or 4 Strongholds (with my 2 Towers, the Thieves Guild still
showed an higher number of towns for purple). It turned out to be a lot
more towns than that. There's a trio of Tower towns, initially neutral,
surrounding the home territory of purple. They're near the mountains and
in the snow. You still want to take out the three Strongholds in rough
terrain first, more to deny reinforcements to your opponent than for
boosting your own army.
46) In any case, if you decided to take out purple, as I did, I did not
let Dracon take any more mines until after purple was almost completely
crushed.
47) In my explorations, I noticed that purple heroes moved very far. Be
wary of that.
48) I took my first purple town on month 2, week 4, day 3.
49) When you take your first Stronghold, hire 2 new heroes right away to
explore your surroundings.
50) There was a strong purple hero by the name of Shiva who sneaked in
my territory while I was invading hers. It would have been rather easy
to defeat her if Dracon could have Town Portalled back to my hometown
but he could not lacking skill in Earth Magic. Getting it to advanced
earth magic skill was now my main priority so I could go back to my
second Tower and recapture the first one.
51) I lost a good portion of my army taking back that town. I had only
11 Titans, 10 Naga Queens and 46 Iron Golems left.
52) A second Seer Hut you might find will give you the Golden Bow (no
more shooting penalty over 10 hexes or over walls) in exchange for the
Angel Feather Arrows.
53) Sometimes it is better not to attack with troops that would die in
retaliation and let the turrets do the work. It is something the AI will
never do well when defending a town but that you should learn and use
yourself.
54) There's also the trick of flying around with a fast flying troop
avoiding enemy attacks while the turrets shoot.
55) In the later game, you will likely have Resurrect but you will then
have to face higher numbers of Rust Dragons. What I did was Mass Slow,
Blind one Rust Dragon stack when they were only two left and resurrect
all the troops that had died. I also used single Obsidian Gargoyles as
baits on the first turn (no Golems or Gremlins because they would have
slowed me down and time was of importance).
56) I later experimented with Dracon leading only Titans.. This leaves
you with a second army to flag more mines.
57) I did decide to finish off purple before taking the remaining mines
but the territory being quite large, it took a little time to track down
every last enemy hero (Cast View Air to help).
58) One of the annoyances was that there would be Stronghold enemies
tying to take back some of their towns back while Dracon and the second
main army were busy elsewhere. Gold was not much of a problem by now but
those particular towns were not allowed to build creature dwellings
beyond level 3
59) To recap, there are 2 neutral Towers at the end of each fork of the
paved road (starting from your starting town). There are 3 purple
Strongholds in the rough territory. 3 neutral Towers that will likely be
taken by purple in the mountain belt surrounding its territory and
finally there is one last Tower roughly in the center.
60) I used Town Portal a lot. It would have been much tougher (and
tedious) without it.
61) Mass Haste might be better than Mass Slow to prevent enemies from
fleeing on the first round (and they will). The War Machines are not
affected by Mass Slow I think or was there another reason why I wrote
that down... Anyway my personal experience says that Mass Haste is
better.
62) Purple was vanquished on month 4, week 4, day 2. You still have to
flag all the mines to win though.
63) In the later game, you could very well kill the remaining Rust
Dragons stacks with only Titans in Dracon's army (I had a second army
with Thunderbirds, Ancient Behemoths, Naga Queens and Enchanters). Cast
Haste, Blind (when 2 stacks of Rusties are left) then Resurrect on your
Titans. Or you might try this if you have lots of spell points:
Counterstrike, Implosions and Resurrect. Actually the second way you are
actually more likely to lose troops (you have 3 Counterstrikes, not
unlimited ones each turn).
64) Remember that Swarm of Archmagi in the southwest corner that we
skipped early in the game. I finally got to them to see what scroll they
protected. For that battle, I would have used Mass Forgetfulness if I
had had it but I did not. Use Berzerk, Blind or Summon Elemental instead
(summoned elementals are nice because they will absorb hits intended for
your real troops).
65) The scroll was one of Dimension Door. It would have been very
necessary if I had decided to mostly ignore purple and simply go for the
mines. Now it just permitted me to save some time in the end game and to
free an hero from jail (Crag Hack, level 20 Barbarian who will have his
own Dimension Door scroll).
66) Cast View Earth to find missing mines.
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