Heroes 5 strategy on Dungeon campaign mission 3: The cultists
Quebec Dragon
2) The shadow matriarch you see will join you for free. Have Raelag
and Shadya meet and exchange troops so that their armies are roughly
equal. Have one shadow maiden/matriarch for each hero so that you're
able to cast one extra spell per turn with them ( I liked to favor
slow).
3)Have the hero who has empowered spells (it doesn't matter whom if
it's both heroes) go in the western branch at the intersection.
Capture your first dungeon. I used empowered chain lightning (on the
blood maidens) and empowered implosion so the battle ended sooner and
the defending enemy hero didn't have time to cast too many spells.
Depending on the battle order, it might be better to cast empowered
meteor shower instead of empowered chain lightning if you can hit 2
enemy stacks instead of just one. Build the capitol. Finish the turn
inside the town so that you can regain your spell points. Buy all the
troops you can for your hero including dark raiders (dwelling built
the next day).
3b) In hindsight, it seems Shadya is the best choice to go in the
western branch since most mines there seemed protected by shooters.
She's better because of her shadow dancer specialty that makes long
distance attacks inflict less damage on her troops.
4) Do not shoot at succubus with your own shooters. You'll inflict
little damage and just suffer retaliation.
5)It's probably obvious but fireball and meteor shower inflict the
same amount of damage. It's simply the area effect that changes. Keep
this in mind to save some spell points.
6) There's another dungeon town in the northern branch (I just cast
meteor shower to kill the clumped troops) but once you conquer it, the
red inferno player is awakened and will come to the aid of its
beleaguered blue ally.
7) Your objectives in week 1 is to take as many mines as quickly as
possible as well as to build up to castle fortifications while also
building the most creature dwellings possible in your 2 towns (try to
get at least one dragon lair).
8) A high-level red cultist will arrive from the southeast (where you
started). Raelag had no problem taking care of him with meteor shower.
9) I traded gems and mercury for wood on day 7 so I could buy 2 extra
creature dwellings requiring that resource. If you trade, and I
encourage you to do so, try to trade gems and mercury first since
sulfur and crystal are more important for the dungeon.
10) It's not possible to trade "empowered" spells between heroes if
you have the scolar skill unfortunately.
11) In week 2, the first dwelling upgrades in both towns were for
blood furies and minotaur guards (although I had already upgraded the
minotaur dwelling in the first week for the western town).
12) Hire an extra hero or two. Keep a lookout in your taverns for high-
level heroes you defeated in the previous week. If you're lucky enough
to see and hire one, keep him or her in your starting area to serve as
a defender.
13) In week 3, buy troops for Raelag and Shadya who should proceed to
defeat the guardians of the monoliths and explore beyond. Since you
won't be able to afford everything, skip the hydras except perhaps for
a couple of them for each main hero that will serve as blockers for
your assassins. However if you do buy hydras and have a roster full of
all 7 dungeon units, you will not be able to split your shadow witches
for extra spellcasting. The unbought hydras can serve as potential
defenders of the towns when and if you need them. Buy shadow witches
before minotaur guards (who would not have time to engage in most
battles anyway). You don't need to buy every single minotaur guard
before you leave.
14) One extra scout should accompany each main hero and explore the
branching paths.
15) The objective in week 3 is to build your second dragon lair
16) You will quickly come upon some monoliths leading to surface
islands on the center of the map. One of the islands, the one most to
the southeast, has several unprotected chests so it's worth having a
scout take them instead of continuing to explore underground right
away.
17) Use the key ALT when you need to highlight interesting stuff on
the ground.
18) In the center north of the underground map, I was lucky enough to
come upon an undefended blue town called Seishnec with one of my
scouts. It was on day 1 of week 4 no less so I bought every troop I
could to defend it while Shadya was rushing back to take care of
nearby blue enemy heroes. I suggest buying a tavern (if it's not
built) to hire an extra hero and combine troops on the best of the two
heroes.
19) Raelag came upon another blue lightly-defended dungeon called
Targath on the same day. It's in the center northwest part of the map.
Since it was my first time playing this scenario, I did not know the
locations of the blue towns beforehand. It's obviously possible to
take 2 blue towns in week 3 and I didn't see any blue heroes that
could have beaten either Shadya or Raelag. By the way, depending on
where you explored, you could come upon 2 other blue towns first, one
is in the southwest corner (Talmon) and the other in the northeast
corner (Shansyl). I don't think the order of conquest really matters
although the Talmon and Shansyl will probably be easier to defend
since they're farther away from the northwest blue dungeon in the
northwest corner that you cannot reach because of a garrison
20) In week 4, another red hero will come gunning for you with a much
stronger army this time. It's kind of difficult to guess which town he
will go for but I think he's more likely to go towards the least
defended town. Hire shadow dragons, shadow witches, assassins and
hydras in that order since you won't likely be able to afford
everything. Trade everything you can for gold except sulfur,crystal,
wood and ore. You should keep at least 5 of each, a little more if you
can. Why? So you can still build at least a dwelling each day after
the crisis has passed.
21) It turns out that the red hero was intimidated by the armies in
both my starting towns and decided to continue on his way. It gave the
opportunity for Raelag to catch up with red and kick his ass.
22) During the second month, you should be able to take 2 other blue
dungeons (one with Shadya and the other with Raelag) for a grand total
of 6 dungeons and just one left to go in the northwest corner beyond a
garrison.
23) Here are some battle tips to defeat highly powerful warlocks with
strong armies in their castle based on many tries (which I don't
usually do but in this case I indulged myself so I could try
different tactics to lower casualties):
a) Send in a high-level scout with split up blood furies (7 single
units), right-click on the enemy to see what level he is and cast your
most damaging spell to weaken him before you flee or surrender. If
you're very lucky, you might be able to cast 2 spells.
b) Attack with Shadya or Raelag. Spread your units to avoid area of
effect spells in the tactics phase.
c) Defend with your minotaur guards and grim raiders until a wall is
broken. With luck, they will not even need to fight.
d) Cast righteous might on the shadow dragons with your 2-unit shadow
witch.
e) Keep casting slow afterwards with your shadow witches/matriarchs
until most enemy units are slowed. If you have shadow matriarchs, cast
confusion on the strongest enemy defender or the stack that the shadow
dragons are going to attack and be retaliated against.
f) Shoot a different target with your assassins each turn because
their continuous poison damage is based on the number of assassins at
the time of the shot and not the current number of assassins.
g) Attack with your shadow dragons on the strongest enemy unit you can
reach.
h) Your hero should cast empowered chain lightning, empowered meteor
shower, empowered fireball or empowered circle of winter depending on
the masteries he or she has. Chain lightning is good against spread
units and with master of storms stuns the first target (making it act
a little later than he would have normally). Meteor shower inflicts
equal damage in a 5 by 5 area but is not improved with master of fire.
Fireball with master of fire has a small 3 by 3 square damage area but
lowers the defense of the targets by 50% for one turn. Circle of
winter with master ice inflicts damage in a 3 by 3 square area donut
shape and freezes the opponents for 0.3 turns (according to the Age of
Heroes manual, freezing effect is always better than stunning, however
the freezing duration is divided by the number of units frozen. So
basically, the more units you freeze, the less time they are frozen).
i) If all else fails, come back later with a stronger army.
24) The main problem with that battle was the level 20 warlock and his
spellcasting quickness. It was him doing most of the damage and not
his army. If I did not have to deal with such a powerful and quick
spellcaster, I would have favored mass spells at first, especially
slow and confusion, followed by earthquake so my grim raiders and
minotaur guards could have gotten a piece of the action. Conjuring a
phoenix somewhere in there would not have been a bad choice especially
since the phoenix grows in strength as the spellcaster does, making
the phoenix potentially the fastest and strongest creature in the
game.
26) Large creatures (grim raiders) will be stuck in the moat twice
while normal-sized creatures (minotaur guards) will only be stuck
once.
27) In my experience, there's a stronger chance of earthquake
destroying the main gate (desired outcome) on the third or later turn
of your hero probably because your catapult has already damaged some
of the walls.
28) Another red cultist of level 19 arrived on month 2, week 2, day 2.
I do not know if he was set to arrive that day or if it was because I
had taken my sixth dungeon. His army included 7 archdevils, 34
succubus mistresses, 90 horned overseers, 58 ceberus, 96 imp
familiars. If you destroy this third red army, then no more of them
will come and you will have completed the crush demon secondary
objective.
29) For that battle, Shadya cast mass slow, mass confusion (preventing
the enemies from shooting, casting and retaliating at 100%!),
empowered implosion against the archdevils. Raelag might be more
limited if he doesn't have dark magic (like me). In this case, go for
phantom forces if you have it or the most damaging spells. My troops
mostly stayed on my side of the battlefield, they did not rush to the
other side.
31) It seems that with patch 1.41, gated inferno units no longer die
when their summoners get all killed.
32) When red was defeated, I only took experience from chests with
Raelag and Shadya afterwards.
33) For light or dark spells to be useful, you do need to have some
skill in light or dark magic (depending). Otherwise, you might be
level 25, the haste spell might last for 30 turns but it will still
only improve your initiative by 10%.
34) There's a monolith leading to a narrow island that has a Sylanna's
ancient. This is an easy level upgrade. It looks like a tree but if
you don't see it, press ALT.
35) Level cap is 26
36) With 6 dungeons to your name and blue with only one to the
northwest, you're totally outproducing him so finishing off should
just be a matter of time.
Finished on month 3, week 3, day 3 at normal difficulty.
The Quebec Dragon