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Majesty: the Fantasy Kingdom Sim
and
Majesty: the Northern Expansion
Walkthroughs of Advanced, Expert and Master Quests
(Plus Some Other Information)
By Steven W. Carter
(scarter831@earthlink.net)
Last Updated
June 14, 2001
*********************
* TABLE OF CONTENTS *
*********************
1. Introduction
2. Technical Note
3. Gameplay Notes
3.1. Casting Spells on Your Heroes
3.2. Defenses
3.3. Making Money
4. Majesty FKS Advanced Quests
4.1. A Deal with the Demon
4.2. Elven Treachery
4.3. Free the Slaves
4.4. Hold Off the Goblin Hordes
4.5. Quest for the Crown
4.6. Quest for the Magic Ring
5. Majesty FKS Expert Quests
5.1. Brashnard's Ultimate Sphere of Power
5.2. The Dark Forest
5.3. The Day of Reckoning
5.4. The Fertile Plain
5.5. Slay the Mighty Dragon
5.6. Tomb of the Dragon King
5.7. Vengeance of the Liche Queen
6. Majesty NE Advanced Quests
6.1. The Clash of Empires
6.2. The Fortress of Ixmil
6.3. Rise of the Ratmen
6.4. Trade Routes
6.5. Urban Renewal
7. Majesty NE Expert Quests
7.1. Darkness Falls
7.2. Legendary Heroes
7.3. The Siege
7.4. The Valley of the Serpents
8. Majesty NE Master Quests
8.1. Spires of Death
8.2. Vigil for a Fallen Hero
9. Downloadable Quests
9.1. The Wrath of Krolm
9.2. Balance of Twilight
10. Cheat Codes
11. Easter Eggs
12. Version History
13. Permissions and Updates
*******************
* 1. INTRODUCTION *
*******************
This is mostly intended to be a resource for people having trouble solving the
advanced, expert, and master quests of Majesty: the Fantasy Kingdom Sim
(Majesty FKS) and its expansion pack, Majesty: the Northern Expansion (Majesty
NE). In the sections below I'll provide fairly detailed walkthroughs for the
quests, and I'll also give some (hopefully) useful playing tips. I used
version 1.3 for Majesty FKS and 1.1.0.7 for Majesty NE.
I've also included my best playing times for each quest. You can use these
times as a frame of reference for how you're doing -- or for entertainment
value in the case of ``Wrath of Krolm.'' I think my times qualify as good but
not great.
If you read my walkthroughs and they don't work for you, or if you'd simply
like to see other approaches or more information for the quests, there are a
few web pages that you might find useful. The official Majesty web site
(http://www.majestyquest.com) has forums where you can ask questions, but
please do a search first to see if people have already discussed the topics
you're interested in. Two good unofficial sites are Your Majesty's Castle
(http://www.sngaming.com/majesty) and the Majesty Command Center
(http://www.majestyonline.cc). Both have (or will have) walkthroughs for the
quests.
*********************
* 2. TECHNICAL NOTE *
*********************
If you started up Majesty NE and were dismayed to see all of your high scores
and playing times gone, don't despair. There's an easy method to restore your
data.
Do the following:
1. Go to the directory where you installed Majesty NE and delete the files
hiscores.sav and questdata_majx.sav.
2. Go to the directory where you installed Majesty FKS and copy the files
hiscores.sav and questdata.sav.
3. Go back to the directory where you installed Majesty NE and paste the two
files you just copied.
4. Now just rename questdata.sav (in the Majesty NE directory) to
questdata_majx.sav.
Everything should be restored. Note, though, that this will erase anything you
might have done in Majesty NE before copying and pasting the files.
*********************
* 3. GAMEPLAY NOTES *
*********************
3.1 Casting Spells on Your Heroes
---------------------------------
Even at the best of times it is difficult to select units. And during combat,
when you want to cast heal or invisibility or some other spell on one of your
heroes, it can be almost impossible. You'll be just as likely to cast the
spell on an enemy unit as you will be to cast it on your own.
However, there is a way to get around this. Instead of selecting the spell and
then clicking on the unit, you can select the unit, then select the spell, and
then click on the unit's portrait on the interface bar on the left side of the
screen. It might still be difficult to initially select the unit, but at least
this way you'll never miss.
3.2 Defenses
------------
For your perimeter defense, don't rely on guardhouses. They are expensive and
incredibly weak, and there are numerous creatures that can destroy them single-
handedly. The only time I use guardhouses on the perimeter is to protect a
wizard guild. The guardhouse still won't stop anything, but it gives wizards
something to hide behind as they attack the enemy.
Instead, use your guilds on the perimeter, and especially those guilds that
have lots of hit points. The perfect choice is the warrior guild. It has 800
hit points, and, if creatures attack nearby and none of your heroes respond,
you can always use the call-to-arms option to bring your warriors home to quash
the threat. Dwarven settlements are also a good selection.
The place to use guardhouses is in your interior defense. Specifically, you
should put them next to your marketplaces to protect them against trolls, and
you should put them next to sewers to prevent sewer rats from killing your
peasants and tax collectors.
3.3 Making Money
----------------
The best building for generating gold is (without surprise) the marketplace.
The important thing to realize about marketplaces is that they initially
produce 250 gold per game day (before modifications and item sales), and each
upgrade only adds 50 gold per day. That means it is far more profitable to
have, for example, three level one marketplaces than one level three
marketplace. They'll cost about the same but the former will produce over
twice as much gold as the latter.
The exception to the rule occurs with trading posts. The level of the
destination marketplace is the multiplier used on the amount of gold carried by
caravans, and so you want all of your destination marketplaces to be level
three.
One often overlooked money building is the inn. One inn will produce 100 gold
per game day, and, given its low cost, will quickly start making you a profit.
Inns also grow slowly in cost, so you can put down half a dozen inns and start
making a profit with all of them within a game week. Plus, inns can give you a
fountain early in the game, and that has beneficial effects as well.
**********************************
* 4. MAJESTY FKS ADVANCED QUESTS *
**********************************
4.1. A Deal with the Demon
--------------------------
Objective:
1. Accumulate 100,000 gold within 40 days.
My Best Time:
27 days
Walkthrough:
There will be several creature lairs on the map, and your palace is going to
start somewhere near the middle of the map -- all of which means you're going
to have company at your base quickly. Luckily, you will have a temple of
krypta, a warrior guild, and a wizard guild at your disposal. Wizards are too
fragile for this quest, so train a pair of warriors and a pair of priestesses,
and then upgrade your palace to level two. Meanwhile, also build a marketplace
and, once you get a feel for where attacks will come from or see where the
sewers pop up, a guardhouse or two.
Your buildings start out in three groups on the map: your main base in the
middle somewhere, a warrior guild all alone on one edge, and a trio of
buildings on another edge. The trio isn't especially important, so if it
doesn't happen to end up right next to your main base, forget about it and let
it be destroyed. (But remember to take it off your repair and tax routes
first.) The warrior guild is easy to protect since you can use call-to-arms,
and if it far away from your base go ahead and put a guardhouse and a trading
post next to it. Trading posts are really useful on this map, but only put
them where they will be safe.
You don't really need to do a lot with your heroes for this quest. Don't worry
about upgrading your wizard guild or researching at your blacksmith. Just
create another priestess and warrior and let them do their thing, replacing
them if necessary. Whenever they happen to uncover a creature lair, put an
attack flag on it and let them destroy it.
So spend most of the time during the first 10 or so years building up
marketplaces and inns, with a guardhouse or two thrown in for defense and for
shortening tax routes. I recommend you put up three marketplaces (with at
least one at level three) and four or five inns (for the extra income and a
fountain). And be sure to build an elven bungalow as soon as possible. With
those buildings and perhaps a trading post or two, you should make 5-6k a day.
Then you can just sit back and watch your heroes at work for about 15 days
until you have 100,000 gold.
Note: If you're really desperate in this quest, you can always ``cheat'' and
use save-and-restore with the gambling house. Just save before you gamble,
save every time you win, and restore every time you don't. If you’re patient,
you'll gain the gold you need with few game days passing.
4.2. Elven Treachery
--------------------
Objectives:
1. Destroy all elven buildings and units within 30 days, or
2. Accumulate 50,000 gold within 30 days.
My Best Time:
23 days
Walkthrough:
I'll give walkthroughs for both possible objectives, but first a note about elf
heroes: they have a thing about guardhouses that shoot arrows. If they see
one, they'll just run away. So defending your base is pretty easy in this
quest: just space out some guardhouses along the perimeter of your base.
The first way to solve the quest is to generate 50,000 gold. This is a pretty
boring and wimpy solution, but it is the easiest. Start out by building a
gnome hovel, and then place a couple of guardhouses at the most obvious routes
into your base. Then build a ranger guild and train four rangers so you can
upgrade your palace to level two. Then just finish placing perimeter
guardhouses, and put three marketplaces and as many inns as you can fit into
your corner of the map. Then just crank up the speed setting and twiddle your
thumbs for 10-15 minutes. You should generate over 2000 gold per day and build
up 50,000 gold before Day 30 (but not by much).
The more exciting solution to the quest is to kill all of the elves and destroy
their buildings. Once again build a gnome hovel first, and then build a couple
guardhouses to defend your base and keep the enemy elves from picking off your
peasants. Next build a ranger guild, a warrior guild, a blacksmith, and a
marketplace. Begin training and researching, and upgrade your palace when you
can. Don't train beyond four units yet because your units will probably get
killed at this point. They don't seem to have a problem fighting against
multiple enemies at once, and warriors are slower than elves and will get
killed when they try to flee.
Instead, let your guardhouses do the bulk of the work in protecting your base
while you build temples to agrela and dauros, and then start creating paladins.
Don't train any monks or healers, but upgrade the temple to agrela to level
three so you can help out your units if they get into trouble. Also during
this period, it's a good idea to build another marketplace and some inns, and
to upgrade your blacksmith so your paladins will have good equipment. You
might also want to build another warrior guild or two, just to finish the
mission more quickly.
Then it's just a matter of search and destroy for your paladins. Keep training
/ resurrecting rangers until you find four groups of elf buildings, and then
just set attack flags on the enemy buildings one at a time until they're all
gone. One enemy building of interest is the elven hideout. It contains 15,000
gold in its coffers, and the units who destroy it will be able to afford all
the equipment they want.
4.3. Free the Slaves
--------------------
Objectives:
1. Destroy the four slave pits.
2. Kill Url-Shekk.
My Best Time:
16 days
Walkthrough:
Enemy forces won't arrive at your base for a while, so start out by getting
your economy rolling. Quickly put a marketplace next to the entrance to your
palace, and place a warrior guild next to the marketplace to protect it. Place
the warrior guild right away so the incoming gnome hovels won't get in the way.
Then train a couple gnomes and four rogues, and advance your palace to level
two.
Next, build a blacksmith to reduce the cost of future buildings, research
healing potions at the marketplace, and place a guardhouse in a useful place
(such as next to the sewer that will probably have appeared). All of this
should take about a day and tap your funds.
Now, as your gold permits, add a ranger guild and start training rangers and
warriors. On days 2 and 4 you'll receive gold from a neighboring kingdom (4000
gold in total), and you can use this to help in training units and also to
upgrade your rogue guild and marketplace. Then proceed to build up your base
normally.
Let your rangers do their thing, and eventually they'll find a slave pit. You
might also want to put out some explore flags so your rogues will help out.
Then just put an attack flag on the pit, and your rogues and warriors will get
to work. Once the pit is destroyed, you'll receive some units as
reinforcements. These units can be paladins, gnomes, warriors of discord, and
priestesses. They don't need a home temple or guild, but make sure you have at
least one inn so they'll have a place to rest.
There are three more pits somewhere on the map, and there is also an outpost
(containing three houses and a trading post) for you to find. I ignored the
outpost and let it supply me with gold while it lasted (which wasn't terribly
long). If you want to protect it, place a warrior guild next to it and use
call-to-arms whenever there is trouble.
After you destroy the second pit, a large wave of rats and other wimpy
creatures will swarm at your base. Use call-to-arms to bring your warriors
home, and place attack flags on various enemies to get your other units
interested. It's not a bad idea to have a couple guardhouses at key points in
your base, but four warriors can take down the entire attack on their own
(albeit slowly) so guardhouses aren't really necessary, and you can use your
gold on more units instead.
Before destroying the last pit, make sure you have a temple to agrela and four
healers trained. When Url-Shekk appears, he'll wander around the map for a
while, but finally he'll stop in a place and fight. He has a fast but weak
ranged fire attack, and if you have a healer in the area, she'll be able to
heal faster than Url-Shekk can damage your units. Then it's just a matter of
putting a big bounty on his head and getting enough of your units to him to
kill him. He only has 255 hit points, and your warriors and paladins should be
able to kill him even if your healers don't get involved.
4.4. Hold Off the Goblin Hordes
-------------------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy all goblin settlements.
My Best Time:
9 days
Walkthrough:
You'll come under attack almost immediately, but you'll still have some things
going for you: two guardhouses, two warriors of discord, and some allied
wizards. Plus you'll have 15,000 gold, and the allied wizards will donate
about 6000 more gold to your cause during the first four days. So you'll have
the means and necessity to get started quickly.
Unfortunately, you can't build gnome hovels during this quest, but your palace
will start out at level two, and so you'll have four peasants right away. Put
them to work on a marketplace (next to your warrior guild), and while that's in
progress move your ranger guild closer to your palace, research arrows for the
guardhouses, build a wizard guild, and train warriors and rangers. Then put a
blacksmith and library wherever is convenient, and build a rogue guild and
upgrade it as well.
Train a full complement of units for each guild and let them pretty much work
on their own while you upgrade and research at your library, blacksmith, and
marketplace. If your units stumble across a goblin lair, put an attack flag on
it and it won't last long.
You'll be under constant attacks from the goblins, so most of your forces will
stay at your base to defend it. But a few units (like the rogues) will venture
out to destroy flagged lairs. There are only 15 goblin lairs, and it won't
take too long to destroy them all.
Just ignore the starting inn since it isn't useful enough to protect from the
goblins. You can also ignore the allied wizards. On Day 5 their guild will
stop being invulnerable, but wizards are pretty good about killing goblins, and
they should be able to take care of themselves -- and perhaps even help you out
by destroying a nearby goblin lair or two.
There aren't any surprises in the quest. You just need to explore and destroy.
4.5. Quest for the Crown
------------------------
Objective:
1. Find and destroy the crown's tower.
My Best Time:
20 days
Walkthrough:
Incoming! You'll immediately be attacked by 15 minotaurs, and your goal in the
first few minutes of the quest should be to minimize the damage as much as
possible. To that end, start cranking out units right away, and if you see
minotaurs approaching one of your wizard towers, enchant it so it can defend
itself. Meanwhile, build a marketplace somewhere that looks safe and upgrade
it to sell potions so your heroes will last longer.
You will have good wizard spell coverage at the start of the quest, so take
advantage of it. Upgrade your wizard guild to level three, and wherever you
see three or more minotaurs together, give them a zap with a lightning storm.
The minotaurs will attack in three groups of five at the start, and a couple of
well-placed spells can really decimate their numbers.
Once you hold off the initial onslaught, the quest should be pretty
straightforward. You just have to find the tower with the crown in it. The
tower is probably in one of the corners of the map, and it will be guarded by
two evil occuli. So if you find an occulus during your explorations, set
explore flags in the area until you find the tower, and then flag the tower
itself.
While the search for the tower is going on, simply build up your base like
normal, and do whatever upgrading and researching you can. There are two elven
outposts on the map, and they'll join your kingdom when you find them. That
should give you enough of a boost to your economy to allow you to build all the
heroes you need. There are also a handful of creature lairs that you can
destroy if you want.
Once you destroy the crown's tower, nothing bad happens. The quest simply
ends.
4.6. Quest for the Magic Ring
-----------------------------
Objective:
1. Recover the ring of healing.
My Best Time:
17 days
Walkthrough:
You'll start with a temple to helia, so go ahead and start training four
solarii while you construct your base. Put down a blacksmith first and then a
marketplace. By that time you should have your four solarii so upgrade your
palace to level two. When the elves offer to join your kingdom, let them and
build an elven bungalow.
There is another kingdom on the map, and they'll be allied with you. In fact,
on Day 4 they will even give you some gold. Take advantage by building another
marketplace and doing some upgrades. Eventually you should build a ranger
guild, a warrior guild, a temple to agrela and a temple to dauros. Let your
rangers explore the map while you train paladins, and also upgrade your temple
to agrela to level three so you can help out your units.
Eventually somebody will find the tower with the ring in it. It will be
guarded by some daemonwood, but your solarii or paladins should be able to
handle them (perhaps will a few spells from you). Once you then destroy the
tower, all sorts of bad things will happen. The allied kingdom will turn
against you, and so you'll suddenly have to fight them. Plus, three black
phantoms will appear at the site of the tower, and their spells will probably
be able to kill most of your units. Lastly, a special item box (the ring) will
appear on the ground next to the black phantoms.
All you have to do at this point is grab the box and make a dash to the
``hidden ring site'' that will appear somewhere else on the map (usually in the
middle somewhere). The problem is that most your units will run from the black
phantoms and never get to the box. If you're unlucky, you'll have to fight the
black phantoms and go through a lot of units / resurrections before killing
them. If you're lucky, some enterprising unit will dodge the phantoms and grab
the ring. In my best game, my toughest solarii happened to die right next to
the ring box, and so once the phantoms wandered away a little, I resurrected
her and she grabbed the ring and dropped it off. In another game, one of my
heroes grabbed the ring right after the tower fell, and it delivered the ring
during the confusion. So you have a few options, and you might want to save
your game right before attacking the tower just in case the black phantoms
really do a number on you.
Note: If you have problems with the other kingdom claiming the ring before you
can, your best option is probably to destroy the kingdom before attacking the
ring tower. They don't upgrade their buildings or do any research as far as I
can tell, and so they're not difficult to defeat.
********************************
* 5. MAJESTY FKS EXPERT QUESTS *
********************************
5.1. Brashnard's Ultimate Sphere of Power
-----------------------------------------
Objective:
1. Locate and acquire the seven shards of Brashnard's Sphere.
My Best Time:
26 days
Walkthrough:
You'll start out with two temples to krolm on either side of your palace.
Immediately start training barbarians; you'll come under attack from a
multitude of spiders, spitters, and undead very soon. While you're training,
build a marketplace next to the entrance to your palace and place a guardhouse
next to it to protect it. Then upgrade your palace to level two.
As soon as you see enemy creatures, and as soon as you have six barbarians, use
rage-of-krolm. Rage-of-krolm is expensive, but it should prevent some of your
barbarians from dying, it should prevent a bunch of graveyards from littering
your base, and it should hopefully give you some veteran units when the first
wave of attacks is over. I used it three times during the first wave, and I
only lost one barbarian (as opposed to about 10 when I didn't use it).
Now work on your base and do things that will help out your barbarians. Make
sure your marketplace sells potions. Build a blacksmith and research weapons
and armor. Add a wizard guild so you can cast invisibility. Then get to work
adding another marketplace and some inns so you can make money, and build a
ranger guild and rogue guild so you can explore the map. Keep replacing your
barbarians as necessary so you always have eight.
Note that rangers will follow and support barbarians, so they won't explore the
map as well as they usually do. You'll have to use explore flags, and you
might want to build a second rogue guild just so you'll explore more quickly.
The shard shrines are usually located along the edge of the map, so that's
where you should put the flags.
Each time you destroy a shard shrine, a magic item box will fall to the ground
and some enemy creatures will appear. The creatures won't be very powerful
(harpies, hellboars, and so forth) but the magic items will be nice. You'll
probably have the most problems fighting the shrine guards, which can include
rock golems, evil occuli, and dragons. But just throw your heroes at them
until they fall. Once you've destroyed all seven shrines, you'll automatically
put the shards together to form the sphere (even if your heroes aren't holding
all the shards), and the mission will end.
5.2. The Dark Forest
--------------------
Objectives:
1. Cure your kingdom.
2. Kill the witch king.
My Best Time:
27 days
Walkthrough:
You'll start out with just a warrior guild, and you won't be able to build any
other guilds or temples until you find the nearby temple to fervus. But that's
ok; no enemy creatures will attack you for a while, and so you can start
working on your economy. Surround your palace with three marketplaces, a
blacksmith, and three or four inns (as many as fit in).
Only train one more warrior, and set explore flags around your base. Your
warriors will either find a message stump or a statue. The stump will lie
directly in line between your palace and the temple to fervus, and there will
be four statues surrounding the temple. So either discovery will tip you off
to the location of the temple, and you should set more explore flags as
necessary.
Once you find the temple to fervus, you'll need to make a choice. You can
either keep the temple and then use warriors of discord and priestesses, or you
can destroy the temple and use paladins and healers. I prefer the latter
combination, and so I decided to destroy the temple.
Once you have four heroes, upgrade your palace and build an elven bungalow.
You should now have a significant stream of money coming in, so put it to use.
Build up your base and start cranking out heroes. Add a ranger guild first so
your rangers can help you explore the map. You should also set explore flags
around the edges of the map (and particularly in the corners) to find enemy
lairs and the witch king's tower. Destroy any lairs and creatures you find,
and then focus on the tower.
Surrounding the tower you'll find several daemonwood. Put attack flags on them
to draw your paladins / warriors of discord to the area. Finish off the
daemonwood and then destroy the tower.
When the tower falls, the witch king will appear on the map (but not where the
tower was) and all the daemonwood you haven't killed yet (on all parts of the
map) will head for your base. The witch king will continually create spiders,
so even if you haven't explored the entire map yet, it shouldn't take too long
to figure out where he is. Once you do, put a huge bounty on his head and
watch your heroes rush to greet him. Use heal and resurrect spells as
necessary, but it shouldn't be too difficult to kill him. Two mid- to high-
level paladins can do the job with no problem.
5.3. The Day of Reckoning
-------------------------
Objective:
1. Survive.
My Best Time:
22 days
Walkthrough:
This is a difficult and annoying quest. It's difficult because you'll face all
of the super bad guys from the earlier quests -- the witch king, liche queen,
Vendral and so forth -- and it's annoying because your base will be spread out,
there will be houses all over the place getting in the way and distracting your
henchmen, and random lightning bolts will damage your buildings and kill your
units.
It's depressing to try and write a walkthrough and say something like you'll
need a good amount of luck on your side to win, but there you go. You'll need
some luck. You could use a good strategy five times and only have it work once
(or at least that's my experience). If lightning bolts keep killing your
peasants and tax collectors, if your starting heroes decide to run instead of
fight, if spiders swarm on two sides of your base and all your heroes go to
only one side, then you're probably going to lose. Luckily, when you lose,
you'll tend to lose early, and so you can start again without investing too
much time in a lost effort.
But, anyway, when you start the mission you'll have a base in the center of the
map with a couple dozen houses surrounding it. Several minotaurs and a cyclops
will already be at your houses, wailing away at them as they head towards your
palace. Fortunately, you'll start out with two level 50 heroes, a warrior and
a wizard, and they'll usually head straight for the attackers even if you don't
set any bounty flags on them. If you can find the wizard early enough, it's
not a bad idea to make him invisible so he'll stay in battle longer before
fleeing.
While your heroes are off defending the realm, you'll need to do three things:
1. Start training heroes at your three existing guilds. Usually I'd wait for a
library before training wizards, but in this case the only enemies your wizards
will really be useful against are the spiders you'll see in the second wave.
Most of the other enemies you'll face will either be highly magic resistant or
have the magic mirror spell. So get some wizards training early, and keep all
of your guilds full.
2. Start building your base. This will be tricky because of all the houses,
and so you probably won't be able to place buildings in a circle around your
palace. My best suggestion is to go for your economy first by putting down
three marketplaces. Only upgrade one of the marketplaces to level three unless
you find that one of the others really needs the extra hit points. Then you
can add in a rogue guild so your rogues can help you explore the map and a
second warrior guild for defense. Later you can add things like a library and
a blacksmith and at least one inn (so you'll get a fountain), plus a guardhouse
or two to guard against sewer entrances and to protect your marketplaces.
3. Figure out how you want to deal with all of the houses. It's a pain to go
through them all and take them off your repair and tax routes, but that's
probably the best plan. Certainly you should take them off the repair route so
your peasants will concentrate on building your base, but it's difficult to
ignore the money the houses will generate since you'll need so much during the
quest. You could always compromise and leave the closest homes on your tax
route and then use extortion to get the gold from the rest (but only when your
marketplaces are empty). Regardless, you'll also need to select all of your
tax collectors and change their minimum pick-up amount to something more
substantial, like 500 gold, so they won't waste time on houses and inns when
your marketplaces are stockpiling gold.
You probably won't be able to get all of the above done before the second wave
of attacks arrives in the middle of Day 2, but keep working at it. The second
wave will feature the witch king and three evil occuli, and they'll show up on
the map when they arrive (plus the king will taunt you). None of the four will
attack your base, so you'll have to go out and get them. It's especially
important to kill the king because he'll continually spawn spiders, and the
spiders, while wimpy alone, will take down buildings quickly if they're allowed
to swarm. They're especially dangerous to any outposts you've managed to find
because those will tend to be lightly guarded, if guarded at all.
The best way to kill the witch king is to set a huge bounty on his head and
hope for the best. The king will use the magic mirror spell, and so your level
50 wizard will be useless against him, but your level 50 warrior will be able
to do the job. So try to get him interested, and also try to get your other
units involved by setting some attack flags on any spiders that are nearby.
They might attack the spiders and then stick around to help with the king. Or
maybe not. For me the witch king is the most difficult creature in the quest
to kill, and I never get him until about the fourth wave.
Meanwhile, try to get your rangers and thieves to explore the map, and as soon
as you find a temple to dauros or a temple to fervus, immediately go up to
three warrior guilds and start training paladins or warriors of discord. You
might lose the temples, especially if the witch king is still around, and so
you need to take advantage of them as quickly as possible. And if you find the
dwarven settlement, place a trading post next to it. The settlement will be
able to protect the trading post from most attacks.
After six and a half days, three black phantoms will appear. Phantoms aren't
any fun at all. They're resistant to magic and they have a nasty fire attack.
The best way to kill them is through ballista towers as the phantoms chase your
fleeing heroes back to your base. If you haven't found the dwarves yet, then
you'll just have to muddle through the wave by sending lots of heroes at the
phantoms and hoping for the best. If you happen to fight them within your
wizard spell range, you can try casting anti-magic shield on the hero you least
want to die, and that might give it a fighting chance.
After eleven and a half days, the next attack will come. This one should be
relatively easy with only the liche queen and several vampires. Put a big
bounty on the queen's head to draw your level 50 heroes, and also put bounties
on some of the skeletons the queen creates so your lesser heroes will help out
as well. Then just pay attention to the combat and heal your heroes as
necessary.
The next wave will come on Day 16 (unannounced), and it will bring back your
old friends, the black phantoms. There will be three of them again, and
they'll have a fire-breathing lizard name Rrongol the Hunter to help them out.
The best way to kill them -- still -- is with ballista towers. In fact, after
spending the gold necessary to keep your three warrior guilds full, you should
spend your remaining gold on ballista towers. Just put a lot of them around
your base, and train three gnomes so they can help out with the repairs.
The last wave will feature several dragons, including Vendral, and come after
19.5 days. There will also be three more black phantoms and Url Shekk. The
more the merrier, right? Fortunately, the dragons will attack from several
different locations, and some will get distracted by your outposts, while the
others will come straight for your base. If you have the gold, use lightning
storm against the dragons so your heroes can focus on the black phantoms. If
you've found and filled all of the outposts, you'll probably have over 50
heroes by this point, and even if you take heavy losses, you should still have
the firepower necessary to defeat the wave.
5.4. The Fertile Plain
----------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy the seven waves of attackers.
My Best Time:
23 days
Walkthrough:
You'll start out with a lot of gold, but you should avoid wasting it. You'll
have three days before the first wave of attackers hits, and so you can
construct your buildings in a cost-efficient order. To that end, first build a
blacksmith south of your palace. When it is complete, put a marketplace next
to it, and put two wizard guilds to the left and right of your palace. Next
build a warrior guild next to one of your wizard guilds (to protect it) and a
temple to dauros next to the other, and start building a library as soon as one
of the wizard guilds completes.
Once the library is complete, you can start researching at your buildings and
start training wizards. With your remaining money, build another marketplace
or two, train paladins and monks, and upgrade your palace to level three. You
should also upgrade one of your wizard guilds to level three so you can use
lightning storm if things begin to look dicey during any of the attack waves.
The first wave will occur after three days and feature goblins attacking from
the north. They're quick and can take down a building or two before your
heroes can even get there to intervene. If you're in danger of losing a
building you don't want to lose, cast lightning storm to wipe the goblins out.
Otherwise, let your heroes do the work so they can gain experience.
The second wave will occur after six days and feature minotaurs attacking from
the south. Before they arrive, you should place a second warrior guild on the
south side of your base and try to train as many paladins as possible. Keep
some gold handy so that if you really need a lightning storm, you'll be able to
afford it.
The third and forth waves will come quickly, with elves attacking from the east
on Day 8 and dwarves from the west on Day 9. Both elves and dwarves are easy
to kill compared to minotaurs, and so these two waves should be a walk in the
park. Just try to keep an eye on your wizards, and cast invisibility if
necessary to keep them alive.
You'll have some time to rest, relax, and work on your base again for the next
few days. Be sure to build a temple to agrela and upgrade it to level three,
and also try to add a third warrior guild. It never hurts to have extra
paladins running around.
The fifth wave will come on Day 15 and have lots of vampires in it. If you're
unlucky, the vampires will come across your wizards before your paladins, and a
few of your wizards will die due to reflected spells. If that happens, don't
resurrect your wizards right away. Wait for the paladins to get to the scene
or at least for the vampires to move away so your wizards won't just go and
kill themselves again. The easiest way to resurrect dead wizards is to click
on the wizard guilds, find the highest level dead wizard in the lists, select
it, and then cast resurrect on the portrait of the wizard on the interface bar.
The sixth wave will come on Day 18 and have minotaurs again, but this time
they'll attack from all four sides. Set attack flags and use call-to-arms at
your warrior guilds (as necessary) to divide up your heroes so they attack all
of the minotaurs, and not just the ones on one or two sides of your base. With
eight wizards, 10+ paladins, plus maybe some monks and healers running around,
this wave should be relatively painless.
The final wave will come on Day 21. It'll have a dozen rock golems plus Dirgo
the Cyclops (whoever that is) attacking from all four sides. Golems have 290
hit points, and they hit pretty hard, but luckily they're as slow as mud.
They’re also susceptible to magic, and this is where your wizards can shine.
Your wizards will be able to kill everything that attacks in this wave all by
themselves -- as long as there's a paladin or a building or something in
between them and the golems. And even if your wizards get into melee range
with the golems, all is not lost. With a ring of protection, wizards can dodge
pretty well, and if they have the meteor swarm spell they can inflict a lot of
damage before dying. Then you can just resurrect the wizard to let him go at
the golem again.
5.5. Slay the Mighty Dragon
---------------------------
Objectives:
1. Find and destroy the hidden sword site.
2. Kill Vendral.
My Best Time:
21 days
Walkthrough:
Vendral will immediately show up on the map and make a beeline for your base.
Don't train any solarii yet; they'll just get killed. Instead, start
researching at your marketplace and blacksmith, and take the fairgrounds and
marketplace off your tax route (to prevent your tax collectors from dying and
losing gold).
Vendral will meander around your base for a day and a half, damaging buildings
and killing peasants. Then he'll leave, and you'll have a few days before he
comes back. So get your base into shape. Put your buildings back on the tax
route, add another marketplace, continue upgrading and researching, and train
four solarii. Also, place explore flags in a circle around your base, evenly
spaced about one (zoomed out) screen away. The solarii will explore on their
own, but they're not as enthusiastic about it as rangers, and so you'll need to
encourage them. They'll sometimes bite on 100-gold explore flags, but usually
it takes 200 gold. Also, don't put down any guardhouses yet, or else your
solarii will just garrison instead of explore.
Eventually, and hopefully quickly, your solarii will stumble upon a group of
buildings that will join your cause. Chances are, the group will include
either a warrior guild or a rogue guild. Regardless, train heroes right away
since they'll go after explore flags much more often than your solarii will.
Quickly spread your units across the map until you find other outposts and the
hidden sword site.
After 7.5 days, Vendral will come back, and he'll have some harpies with him.
You can't do much at this point other than kill the harpies and hope Vendral
doesn't kill too many of your heroes. When your heroes die, don't replace them
because they'll probably just attack Vendral again and die again. Vendral will
leave after four days, and then you can start training heroes again.
You can now go back to exploring the map and building up your forces.
Upgrading your palace is a good idea because Vendral will always go for your
palace when he attacks. You should also upgrade one or more of your temples so
you'll have an offensive spell you can cast anywhere on the map in case one of
your remote buildings comes under attack. And if you find the temple to
agrela, upgrade it fully so you can keep your heroes alive.
There are two buildings on the map that you'll have to find: the sword site (of
course) and the dwarven settlement. Once you destroy the sword site, one of
your heroes will have to pick up the sword and take it to the dwarven
settlement so the dwarves can duplicate the sword for all of your heroes. As
soon as your hero picks up the sword and starts heading to see the dwarves,
Vendral will reappear and attack. He'll arrive with a few dragons, but with
your veteran units, spells to play with, and the powerful heroes that come with
some of the buildings you've found, you shouldn't have much of a problem
killing him. Just set a huge bounty on his head and watch your heroes rush to
take advantage.
5.6. Tomb of the Dragon King
----------------------------
Objectives:
1. Destroy the three lairs, and then
2. Destroy the tomb of the dragon king.
My Best Time:
21 days
Walkthrough:
There are two important things to know about this map before you get started.
The first is that there will only be three creature lairs on the map, and they
will only create dragons. The quicker you can destroy the lairs, the fewer
dragons you'll have to face -- and, more importantly, the fewer you'll have to
face simultaneously.
The second thing to know is that there will be an outpost right next to your
base. This outpost will always be a (zoomed out) screen or so away, and it
will be between your base and the center of the map. The nice thing about the
outpost is that it will contain a trading post with 9000 gold in its coffers.
If you can get that gold right away, fending off early dragon attacks will be
much easier. After you get the gold, the outpost (plus three temples to krolm
located somewhere else on the map) will pretty much be dragon-bait and not
worth protecting.
You'll also need to make a couple of decisions right away. One is to pick the
non-human race you plan to use. I could make an argument for all three races:
dwarves will give you settlements and ballista towers, which will be more
useful here than normal since you can't use guard towers; gnomes will help you
get your base going and also quickly respond to dragon attacks by repairing the
victim buildings; and elves, as always, will give you more gold.
I picked elves. The dwarven defensive structures will only slow down dragons,
and they'll get destroyed if even two dragons attack them. Dragons are also
pretty good about attacking repairers, and that negates much of the usefulness
of gnomes. Elves, on the other hand, never fail to give you more money, and in
this case you can use the extra gold to upgrade your wizard guild and hit
dragons with lightning storms if you need to. Also, the elven lounge will make
it more likely for your priestesses (and their important skeletons) to stay in
your base, and that will help in defense.
The second decision you'll need to make is what to do with your starting ranger
guild. It's all by itself, usually on the other side of the map, and if you
leave it alone a dragon will come by and destroy it after a couple days (taking
any rangers you trained with it since the rangers will try to defend their
home). If you move the guild, it will cost you 800 gold. If you wait for it
to be destroyed and then build a new one, it will only cost you 700 (or less)
gold. So it is cheaper -- and better, I think -- to let the ranger guild go.
If you train rangers right away, they might find a lair for you, but they might
also find the temples to krolm, and you don't want them to do that.
Priestesses and warriors of discord will be your main fighting units for this
quest, and temples of krolm will prevent you from being able to build their
temples.
So with all of the above in mind, here's how to begin the quest. Train four
priestesses. Skeletons are an excellent defense against dragons, and the more
you have, the better. While that is going on, build a rogue guild so you can
train a rogue and send it out to find the outpost. Then build a marketplace,
an inn, and finally, as soon as possible, upgrade your palace to level two.
That will allow you to bring elves into your kingdom.
About this time you should get your 9000 gold. So build an elven bungalow and
put up two more marketplaces. Then, as your resources allow it, build another
temple to krypta, a warrior guild (at the front of your base), and a temple to
fervus. Also upgrade your buildings where possible. Bring all your markets to
level two just so they'll have more hitpoints.
One dragon will appear on the map at the end of the second day. It will first
attack your ranger guild, and, if you've discovered your outpost by then, it
will attack the outpost next. Between the two you should have more than enough
time to train four (and possibly more) priestesses. They should be able to
kill the dragon before it can destroy any of your buildings.
Another dragon will appear on around the fourth day, and it should be as easy
to kill as the first. The real problem will come at the end of the first week
when five or so dragons will descend upon your base. It's definitely a good
idea to have eight priestesses by then, and if you can throw out some warriors
of discord, even better.
Early in the game you might also be attacked by three vampires. They start out
at the location where the dragon king tomb will eventually appear, but
sometimes they wander over to your base. If that happens, put a bounty on
their heads, and between your skeletons and greedy rogues, you should be able
to swarm and kill them.
Once you survive the dragon attack at the end of the first week, build a ranger
guild and get your rangers exploring. You might even want to put some explore
flags out at the far reaches of the map to get your rogues and elves into the
act as well. Eventually they'll find the three lairs. If you're flush with
gold, start training units that will go for reward flags (rogues, of course,
but also warriors and wizards), and set about 500 gold bounties on each lair.
Each time you destroy a lair, some creatures will appear. The evil castle will
produce medusas, the dark castle will produce werewolves, and the ruined keep
will produce dragons. The important thing to note is that when you destroy the
last lair, not only will the dragon king tomb appear, but a few dragons will
appear with it. So you don't want to destroy the ruined keep last, or else
you'll have to fight about ten dragons at once.
Once you destroy the three lairs and kill the dragons, the mission will
essentially be over. The tomb will produce a dragon every so often, but that's
all you'll have to fight. So just pour all of your gold into an attack flag on
the tomb, and get all your heroes to the scene to finish off the tomb as
quickly as possible.
5.7. Vengeance of the Liche Queen
---------------------------------
Objective:
1. Find and kill the liche queen.
My Best Time:
27 days
Walkthrough:
You'll start out with a pair of temples to agrela flanking your palace. Build
a marketplace and train two healers at each temple. When you have four
healers, upgrade your palace to level two. Then get to work on a warrior guild
and a temple to dauros. At the same time, place a wizard guild and then build
a library. Build one more marketplace, and upgrade both to level two, and then
devote the rest of your gold (as you get it) to training paladins until you
have a full warrior guild.
The undead on the map won't really pay you much attention. Every so often the
liche queen will taunt you, and this seems to be the announcement of a skeleton
/ vampire raid. But it's hard to tell. The undead move so slowly that they
might not arrive until a day or so after the taunt. In any case, be prepared.
Once you have your paladins, build a ranger guild and train four rangers to
explore the map. There will be three outposts you can find: one with a rogue
guild, blacksmith, and inn; a second with a warrior guild and inn; and a third
with a dwarven settlement, ballista tower, and inn. I've listed them in the
order you're likely to find them. The dwarven outpost in particular will
usually be the farthest away.
When you find the blacksmith, be sure to guard it. Putting a warrior guild
next to it is a good idea, and a guardhouse or two wouldn't hurt, either.
Also, as long as you don't find the dwarven outpost first, you can bring elves
(after finding an inn) or gnomes into your kingdom, and then find the dwarves
and have them as well. Elves will be more useful than gnomes in this quest
because the pace will be slow, and you might have to spend a lot of money on
warrior guilds and paladins.
As your rangers uncover the map, let your paladins destroy any lairs that
become visible. Eventually, on the other side of the map, you'll find the
liche queen's tower. It should be easy to spot. There will be lots of
skeletons and vampires and two graveyards nearby. If you built a warrior guild
at your main base, found another at an outpost, and built a third next to the
blacksmith, put a huge bounty on the queen's tower to get all twelve of your
paladins involved. When they destroy the tower, the liche queen will appear,
plus a few of her vampire friends. Your lower level heroes will probably run
away, but as long as a few of your paladins stay you should be able to kill the
vampires and queen easily. But if you have trouble, feel free to construct
some ballista towers around the tower before attacking it so you'll have some
extra help.
*********************************
* 6. MAJESTY NE ADVANCED QUESTS *
*********************************
6.1. The Clash of Empires
-------------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy the goblin and ratman lairs.
My Best Time:
15 days
Walkthrough:
You won't come under attack for 2-3 days, so you'll have time to set up your
base. In fact, you'll have enough time so that you don't have to use the
temple to fervus if you don't want to. Since you'll be fighting a lot of wimpy
creatures, paladins will be overkill but priestesses won't get around quickly
enough. The best choice seems to be barbarians.
So you'll first need to upgrade your palace to level two. To that end, first
build a ranger guild, and, while you're training four rangers, put down a
second marketplace. Then upgrade your palace and add an inn, an elven
bungalow, and a third marketplace. You'll now have enough money coming in to
continually add barbarians and temples to krolm. Don't stop until you have
four temples, but take some time out from building and training to use the
rage-of-krolm function every so often.
You'll have a lot of barbarians running around, but you might want to add a
couple of guardhouses anyway, just to guard against sewers and early attacks.
Since barbarians usually don't buy anything, you won't have to build things
like a blacksmith or a magic bazaar, or upgrade your marketplace beyond selling
potions (for your rangers mostly). If you feel like it and have money you
don't know what to do with, you can also add rogues, warriors, and wizards
since they'll go for reward flags.
Eventually, it'll just be a matter of search and destroy. Ratmen and goblins
aren't very tough, and your barbarians should be able to plow through them
quickly. But try to balance your attacks against the two groups since they'll
fight each other and help you out (as opposed to only attacking one group and
leaving the other group only one target -- you).
Every so often, groups of ratmen and goblins will appear together on the map,
fight each other, and then fight you. Also, pairs of goblin towers or sewer
mains will appear near your base. But none of these events should pose much of
a problem.
6.2. The Fortress of Ixmil
--------------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy Ixmil's fortress.
My Best Time:
26 days
Walkthrough:
You'll have three or four days before you'll come under attack, so I think the
best strategy is to get your economy going first and then worry about your
heroes. So put down a marketplace next to your palace, then add a ranger
guild, and then while you’re training four rangers, add a second marketplace.
Then upgrade your palace to level two.
Now add a warrior guild and a temple to dauros, and start cranking out
paladins. The more paladins, the better, so add a second and third warrior
guild when you can. Wizards will also be useful in this quest, but don't worry
about upgrading the wizard guild. Instead, add a sorcerer's abode and upgrade
that to level three. The best place to put the abode is right next to a
warrior guild so you can use call-to-arms in conjunction with gate to get your
paladins to locations quickly.
Every time the fortress appears, you'll get an audio cue (that sounds like a
spaceship) and the fortress will show up on the map even if it's in an area you
haven't explored yet. The fortress will be surrounded by poisonous plants and
daemonwood, so even if you flag it the first time you see it, your heroes will
run away. Plus, the fortress will defend itself with magical attacks (like a
wizard tower). So wait until you have some mid-level paladins before you make
a concerted effort to attack the fortress.
Also, every time the fortress appears, it'll release a wave of creatures.
These can range from undead to ratmen to minotaurs to dragons. I think the
dragons only appear later in the quest, but you might see a couple of vampires
right off the bat. Early in the mission you'll have to rely on your
guardhouses because pairs of vampires will kill just about everything else
(which is another reason to focus on your economy early).
Then it'll just a matter of building and upgrading, adding heroes as you can
and giving them things to buy. When you're ready to attack the fortress, use
the gate spell to get your heroes to the location quickly, but wait a few
seconds first so the wave of creatures created by the fortress will be out of
the way. Also put flags on the fortress and its defenders to attract more
heroes. Then keep an eye on your heroes and heal them liberally so they won't
flee. If you're lucky, the fortress will stick around long enough for you to
destroy. Otherwise you'll have to keep trying.
6.3. Rise of the Ratmen
-----------------------
Objectives:
1. Kill Rhoden, the ratman king.
2. Destroy all broken sewer mains.
My Best Time:
25 days
Walkthrough:
You'll always start with at least two sewer entrances next to your palace, so
don't bother restarting the quest hoping for a better situation. You'll also
start out with buildings all over the place on the map. So the first thing you
should do is take everything that isn't especially close to your palace off the
repair and tax routes. Then start training rangers and upgrading your
marketplace while building a rogue guild.
You'll be under constant attack from rats during the quest. The numerous sewer
entrances will see to that, and groups of rat shamans, rat champions, and
ratapults will also appear from time to time. Try your best to keep expanding
your base. Add a warrior guild and temple to dauros as quickly as possible,
and upgrade your marketplace to level three so you'll get the full benefit from
the caravans that will come in.
Speaking of caravans, try to keep at least one of the trading posts around
(especially the one next to the level two blacksmith). Pick the one that you
want to defend and put your warrior guild next to it. You might also want to
put a guardhouse or two nearby for extra protection. The trading post is
important. With it and elves, you won't need to build another marketplace.
Let your rangers explore the map while your paladins and monks stay near your
base. You might also want to use guardhouses for extra defense. If you do use
them, put them down in pairs (at least). Solitary guardhouses will get swarmed
and destroyed by the rats, but pairs (or triplets) will sometimes have a
chance. However, you can probably get away with not having guardhouses if you
put buildings with lots of hit points on the perimeter, and let those buildings
plus houses distract the rats while your paladins and monks kill them off.
When you've destroyed all of the sewer mains, Rhoden won't necessarily appear.
I'm not sure if he'll wait a few days first or if it's just predefined that
he'll appear on Day 25. I cleared the map by Day 20 and then had several days
to accumulate gold before he showed up. So when Rhoden finally did make his
appearance on Day 25 it was simplicity itself to wipe him and his entourage out
with wizard spells.
If you don't have the luxury of wizard spells, then the final battle will be a
little more exciting. Rhoden will appear with about three groups of rats, and
they'll all attack from different directions. So let your paladins and monks
do their job as best they can, and remember that it doesn't matter if the rats
destroy a large portion of your base. You just have to kill Rhoden and the
sewer mains that appear when he does, and you'll win the quest.
6.4. Trade Routes
-----------------
Objective:
1. Protect at least half of the caravans over a 31-day period.
My Best Time:
31 days
Walkthrough:
You'll start out with two warriors and a ranger, so quickly train a thief so
you can upgrade your palace to level two. Also quickly start upgrading and
researching at your marketplace. It's the only one you'll get for this quest,
and numerous caravans will be visiting it, so it'll pay off to get it to level
three right away.
With the rest of your money, build a ranger guild and then train rangers and
thieves. After about two days, you'll be attacked by several goblins and enemy
thieves. Low level warriors will tend to run away, but rangers and thieves
will stay and fight, and they'll usually be able to drive off the attack
without anything major being destroyed. Once the attack is over, place a
warrior guild near your marketplace, and put down a couple of guardhouses for
defense. Most of the attacks on your base will be from wimpy creatures like
thieves and goblins, and guardhouses will actually be useful in that case.
Over the 31 days of the quest, you'll periodically see a caravan approach your
base. There isn't much you can do early in the quest, but after a few days you
should try to explore the map and clear the four trade routes. Don't worry
about lone creature lairs, but definitely flag things like goblin towers and
daemonwood trees if they're near a route. Also try to get a temple to agrela
up quickly. You can heal caravans just like any other unit, and since enemy
creatures won't focus on the caravans, you can usually pamper them with heals
to make sure they get to your base.
Every few days, some random bad event will occur. These can be things like
several barbarians attacking your base or a ``magical accident'' at your palace
(which will throw fireballs at your heroes and henchmen) or the appearance of
more daemonwood or poisonous flowers on the map. Just keep the routes clear
and don't worry about the rest. You'll only need to get 15 of the 30 caravans
to your marketplace to win.
6.5. Urban Renewal
------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy all Red guilds, lounges, and gambling halls.
My Best Time:
21 days
Walkthrough:
This is a difficult mission to start out. If you don't flag any of the Red
buildings, Red will essentially be your ally and leave you alone. But the Red
units will also use your shops to grow stronger, and the Red rogues might steal
from your buildings. If you do flag one or more Red buildings, then Red will
attack you after two days, and it'll send several rogues and elves your way.
If they can get to your tax collectors, then the quest will be over. You won't
be able to make any gold and Red will keep chipping away until you lose.
So what you need to do is build some guardhouses. If there isn't enough room
between your palace and the Red buildings, then restart the quest until there
is room. Then add a second marketplace, and protect both marketplaces as well
as the paths your tax collectors are likely to take with four or five
guardhouses. Elves and rogues will run away from guardhouses upgraded with
arrows, and so the guardhouses will give you some breathing space.
Once the guardhouses are up, build a blacksmith, warrior guild, and temple to
dauros. Barbarians won't work well in this quest because they won't buy
potions, and ranged attackers (with poisoned weapons) will just pick them
apart. Priestesses might be a good choice because skeletons are good at
dodging, but I didn't try them. Paladins can mow down rogues and elves pretty
easily, and that's what I used.
Once you upgrade your blacksmith to level three, also add in dwarves. Put
their settlement at the most vulnerable point in your base, and then train
three dwarves to help out the paladins. Also build a temple to agrela at some
point so you can heal, but don't worry about upgrading it. It takes quite a
few rogues and elves to seriously damage a paladin. As long as you keep half
an eye on them you should never need to resurrect them, and so a level one
temple to agrela should be enough.
Once you have four paladins and once your base is secure, the quest will be
just about finished. All you'll have to do is track down the Red buildings and
destroy them, fighting lots of rogues and elves along the way. Red will have a
couple dozen buildings, so it'll take a while. You might want to build a
ranger guild and train some rangers so they'll help you uncover the map. Also
note that Red will have a couple of warriors and barbarians hidden in some
buildings, but once they're ousted they'll head straight for your base where
your defenses or paladins should be able to kill them easily.
*******************************
* 7. MAJESTY NE EXPERT QUESTS *
*******************************
7.1. Darkness Falls
-------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy the wights Styx and Stones.
My Best Time:
16 days
Walkthrough:
This isn't really an expert quest. It's barely even an advanced quest. All
you have to do is kill Styx and Stones within about a day of each other, and
you'll win. That might be difficult if it was difficult to get to Styx and
Stones, or if Styx and Stones were difficult to kill, but it's not and they're
not. So if you've been struggling with the other expert quests, here's one you
can finish in less than an hour.
You'll start out with a warrior guild, but don't train any warriors yet. You
won't come under attack for a while, so you can work on your economy first. So
build a marketplace and then a ranger guild. Then while you're training four
rangers, add a second marketplace and finally upgrade your palace to level two.
Now you can add a temple to dauros and begin training paladins. During this
time a vampire might wander into your base, but a single paladin should be able
to kill it, and it'll be even easier if a ranger or guardhouse helps out.
Continue to expand your base. Add an inn and an elven bungalow to increase
your money flow. Then, as your gold allows, add a temple to agrela, add and
upgrade a blacksmith, and upgrade one of your marketplaces far enough to get
rings of protection. Then add a second warrior guild and train more paladins.
If you're running short on gold, realize that you don't need to train monks or
healers, since they won't help very much.
On the map you'll find several ancient graveyards, which will spawn some undead
creatures every so often. Feel free to ignore them. The worst thing they'll
produce is a vampire, and those should be easy for your paladins to kill. What
you'll have to watch for are two archaic tombs. Each tomb will house a wight,
and once your destroy the tomb, the wight will start wandering the map.
Now the wights aren't very difficult to kill. They'll each have 250 hit
points, but their defensive and resistance ratings won't be overly high, so a
single paladin should be able to kill a wight given enough time. That means
you don't really have to worry about coordinating attacks against the two
archaic tombs and the two wights. If you have to kill one of the wights a
couple of times, it's no big problem.
So let your paladins kill some undead for a while to boost their levels, and
then target one of the archaic tombs. Once the tomb is gone, put a hefty
bounty (1000 gold should be enough) on the wight, and let your paladins get to
work. You might also want to build a wizard guild since wizards are pretty
good about going after bounties, and they'll be able to deal out a lot of
damage while hiding behind your paladins.
Then repeat with the second tomb, and go back and kill the first wight again if
you need to. The only other thing you might have to worry about are herds of
shadow beasts that will appear on the map every so often. But they'll only
have 50 hit points each and just about any of your heroes should be able to
kill them. Also, goblin towers will appear on the map every so often, but
they'll be on your side making it even easier to defend against the shadow
beasts.
7.2. Legendary Heroes
---------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy all of the ancient barrows within 30 days (with maybe a day or two
extra).
My Best Time:
30 days
Walkthrough:
Conceptually, this is not a very difficult quest. There are six ancient
barrows scattered around the map, and you'll just have to find them and destroy
them. What makes the quest difficult is that there are lots of high level
enemy creatures -- like rock golems, dragons, and medusae -- roaming around,
and while your high level melee heroes can handle them pretty easily, your
explorers can't. And so your main difficulty will be in exploring the map.
Since you can only house one hero per guild in this quest, your main concern
other than exploration will be in earning gold. Heroes will be really
expensive, especially when you have to build second and third copies of guilds
to bulk up your army. One way to ease the pain financially, at least a little,
is to use an embassy and an outpost. These buildings will still house two and
six heroes respectively, and so they'll allow you to gain eight more heroes for
``only'' about 15,000 gold. Once you've dropped down one (or perhaps two) of
each guild, go with the embassy and outpost and hope you get something useful.
You can also take the opportunity to add a trading post with the outpost to
generate even more gold.
To start out, train a thief and a solarii, build a second marketplace, and then
upgrade your palace to level two. Put some 100-200 coin explore flags a small
distance away from your base and hope the rogue bites on them. Then add a
ranger guild for the added exploration, put an inn somewhere next to your
palace, and finally add a third marketplace. When the elves offer to join your
kingdom, let them.
At this point you'll have to make a decision about which temples you want to
use for the quest. You can't use barbarians because of the temple to helia,
but you'll still have to choose between paladins and priestesses. I chose
priestesses because they and their skeletons are useful explorers. However,
paladins are a good choice too because they can kill any of the high level
creatures you'll find on the map. Regardless, you should also go with a wizard
guild right away. There's nothing like starting a quest with a high level
wizard.
So now we get to the hard part, which is exploring the map. You can put out
explore flags and hope your rogues and elves will go for them, but usually
they'll run into enough enemy creatures that they won't get very far. You can
also put attack flags on any creatures that you find hovering around unexplored
territory, and sometimes that will work, and sometimes it won't. You can also
try to expand your wizard spell coverage and use the farseeing spell. Your
best bet, though, is to do all three of those things -- and also get your
sorcerer's abode to level three and use the gate spell. You can't set the gate
to a region on the map you haven't explored yet, but you can often put it
somewhere so your explorers can ``leapfrog'' most of the enemy creatures and
find their way to your explore flags.
Each time you destroy a barrow, lots of (mostly bad) things will happen. For
starters, an earthquake will rock your entire base, damaging all of your
buildings and giving your peasants way too much to do (which is another reason
to add an outpost). Secondly, a large wave of enemy creatures will suddenly
appear on the map. Sometimes they'll appear far away from your base giving you
time to prepare, and sometimes they'll appear right in the heart of your base.
Thus, it's a good idea to have your wizard guild at level three before you get
to, say, the third barrow. You probably won't need lightning storm for the
first two barrows because the first one will feature only trolls, which you
should be able to kill easily, and the second will feature medusae, which I've
never had appear inside my base. But the third one will have minotaurs, and
after that you'll get minotaurs, trolls, medusae, and dragons in combination,
and it's definitely a good idea to have spells on your side.
You won't lose the quest if you take over 30 days to destroy the barrows.
After 30 days a permanent earthquake will start up, and it will destroy your
entire base given enough time. However, you won't actually lose until your
palace is destroyed. So if your peasants keep repairing your palace, you might
be able to survive an extra day or two and finish off a last barrow.
But even if you do everything right, you still might not win this quest. A lot
depends on the placement of the barrows. If they end up on the opposite side
of the map, or if your heroes just don't find them, then you're not going to
win. It took me five or six tries to finally get past this quest, and even
then I didn't win until after time had expired. So just keep plugging away.
7.3. The Siege
--------------
Objectives:
1. Destroy Borjin's fortress, or
2. Destroy the caravans supplying Borjin with gold.
My Best Time:
36 days
Walkthrough:
There are two possible objectives, but it doesn't matter. Even if you decide
to attack Borjin's kingdom, you should still try to cut down as many of his
caravans as possible. Otherwise he'll have all sorts of gold, and he'll be
able to continually heal and re-animate his heroes -- not to mention cast
wizard spells like lightning storm if you get close enough to his palace. So
concentrate on the caravans first, and then think about attacking Borjin's
kingdom if things seem to be going well.
As in Trade Routes, there will be four spots where the caravans will appear.
Luckily, they'll all be on ``your'' side of the map, so all you'll need to do
is guard those four areas to destroy the caravans. Since it's not likely your
heroes will be able to cover enough of the map to kill the caravans, you'll
have to rely on defensive towers. And so you'll have to use dwarves. To that
end, upgrade your blacksmith as quickly as possible so you can get the dwarves
in your kingdom. When they join, immediately put their settlement next to the
middle of the three guardhouses between your kingdom and Borjin's. That'll be
a hot spot for the remainder of the quest.
When you start out, first realize that the quest is going to take a while, so
plan ahead by building three marketplaces, plus some inns to protect the edges
of your palace. Later you should add trading posts to some of the remote areas
you'll have to guard because of the enemy caravans, so only upgrade the
marketplaces likely to receive your own caravans. Then upgrade all of your
guardhouses to shoot arrows, but don't upgrade them to level two unless you
really want to.
Early in the mission you should try to chase down caravans with your heroes,
and let the enemy heroes batter themselves against your defensive structures.
So add a rogue guild and train some rogues and rangers. Also, upgrade the
rogue guild to level two. Borjin will heal his caravans sometimes if they get
into trouble, and so every extra bit of damage will help. Later in the quest
you can add a sorcerer's abode so your rangers and rogues will also be able to
use fire balm.
Every time you see a caravan, note its position, and eventually you'll discover
the four starting points. There will also be ``siege markers'' near the
starting points, but the markers will be tough to spot and it'll be easier just
to wait for the caravans to start arriving. If you're lucky, the starting
points will either be close together, making them easier to defend, or they'll
be in the corners of the map farthest from Borjin's kingdom, giving the
caravans the longest distance to travel and forcing them to head straight
through the middle of the map to get to Borjin's marketplace. Regardless, once
you know the starting points of the caravans, try to put some ballista towers
in the area. Five towers will always kill a caravan. In the meantime, use
attack flags to get your rogues and rangers to kill the caravans. If you get
enough together, they'll sometimes do the job, but if the caravan looks like
it's going to get away, then take the attack flag off so your heroes don't go
wandering into the enemy kingdom (where they'll probably get swarmed and
killed).
Once you get a ways into the quest and upgrade your palace to level three,
you'll have to make a decision about which temple to use, helia or lunord.
Lunord will give you the ``winged feet'' spell, and that'll be useful for
chasing down caravans. But if you're going to rely on defensive structures to
kill the caravans, then a better choice is helia. Since you won't be able to
use wizard guilds in the quest, your only other offensive spells will be chain
lightning and frost field. Those are good spells, but they're slow and not
guaranteed to kill anything, and sometimes you'll need to kill an enemy
priestess or wizard quickly. And so you'll find the two helia fire spells to
be very useful.
Once you've guarded a couple of the caravan starting points, you can go ahead
and start thinking about attacking Borjin's base. If you train some dwarves
and paladins, then your those heroes might even make the decision for you.
Once you do start to mix it up with Borjin, make sure you upgrade your temple
to agrela to level three, and then start pushing out heroes. Try to watch over
them and protect them as much as possible, and resurrect them when you can't.
Eventually you'll start killing off some of enemy heroes and destroying some of
the buildings, and once you get to that point it'll just be a matter of time
before you win. If you just want to kill caravans, then just keep building
ballista towers until you have five at every starting point, and eventually
Borjin will run out of money.
7.4. The Valley of the Serpents
-------------------------------
Objectives:
1. Destroy the snake pits.
2. Keep at least one elven bungalow from being destroyed.
My Best Time:
19 days
Walkthrough:
This is a difficult quest to start, but a relatively easy one to finish. Your
base will be at one side of the map, and a lone elven bungalow will be at the
other. You'll have to protect the bungalow, but you'll only need to do so for
about five days. After that the elves will build a couple more bungalows right
next to your base.
About two days into the quest, some elves will join your kingdom and head
straight for an inn to hide. About a day after that, more elves will arrive,
but this time they'll be followed by about ten medusae. The medusae will chase
the elves until they kill them, and then they'll head straight for the
bungalow.
So your first job will be to protect the bungalow from that initial attack.
The obvious ways to do this don't seem to work very well. If you try to build
a warrior guild and some guardhouses near the bungalow, it'll take too long
(even if you cast winged feet on your peasants) and you'll have two bases,
which is always annoying. And some medusae might just wander over and kill
your peasants while they're building. If you try to place a wizard guild and
some wizard towers near the bungalow, the towers will only distract a couple of
the medusae while the others destroy the bungalow. And if you upgrade your
wizard guild all the way to level three so you can cast lightning storm, it'll
be expensive and might not even work since medusae have such a high resistance.
So the way to protect the bungalow -- and this is going to sound odd -- is to
do nothing at all. The medusae will head straight for the bungalow, but
they're bloodthirsty little devils, and if you can get some heroes between them
and their target destination, they'll stop and fight. So how do you get your
heroes to the right spot at the right time? There are two ways. The expensive
way is to use the gate spell. Since you'll start with a level three sorcerer's
abode, this is fairly easy to do. Just wait for the medusae to arrive and then
set a target between them and the bungalow. The cheaper way is to set an
attack flag on one of the snake pits on the map. The medusae will come from
the exact same spot as the first elf group, so if you target a snake pit
between that position and the bungalow, your heroes will be in the way without
even realizing it. Then you'll just need to remove the flag on the pit and set
a couple of flags on the medusae and watch your paladins get to work.
Since you'll have about three days before the initial attack, you can start out
by setting up your economy. To that end, first upgrade your palace to level
two and then build two marketplaces near your palace. Because you'll have
elves already, the marketplaces will generate a good amount of money, and you
won't have to build any more. Then build two warrior guilds and a temple to
dauros and start cranking out paladins. You should be able to train between
six and eight paladins before the medusae attack.
Once you withstand the initial attack, build a rogue guild and a ranger guild,
and upgrade the rogue guild to level two. You'll have to set a lot of attack
flags on a lot of snake pits before you're done, and your rogues and elves will
do a surprisingly good job of destroying the pits for you. Then, as your gold
allows, upgrade one of your marketplaces to level three, build and upgrade a
blacksmith, and build and upgrade a wizard guild. Your heroes will come into a
lot of money before the quest is over, so it's a good idea to give them things
to buy.
Once the elves place a couple bungalows near your base, forget about the
initial bungalow and pick one of the new ones to protect. Your most dangerous
enemy from this point on won't be the medusae, but instead will be the ice
dragons that will show up every so often. They'll have a high defense rating
but a poor resistance, so you can use wizard towers to defend the bungalow.
Also, try to keep some gold around so you can cast lightning storm. The
dragons will stay conveniently bunched up, making the spell effective.
Then it's just a matter of destroying the snake pits. Simply flag a couple of
pits, let your rogues, elves and paladins go to work, and then repeat as
necessary. You should be able to destroy the pits faster than they spawn.
Meanwhile, keep expanding your base and adding more heroes so you can finish
the quest more quickly. Eventually you'll receive groups of gnomes and dwarves
to help out, and it should be smooth sailing from that point on.
*******************************
* 8. MAJESTY NE MASTER QUESTS *
*******************************
8.1. Spires of Death
--------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy the five spires.
My Best Time:
62 days
Walkthrough:
You won't have much time to get settled in with this quest, but even so you
shouldn't make the mistake of using gnomes or training warriors at your warrior
guild. Instead, immediately build a rogue guild next to your base and start
training rogues. Since you can't do anything else useful at the moment, go
ahead a build a marketplace, and, when you have four rogues, upgrade your
palace to level two. Now you can build a temple to dauros and start training
paladins.
After about two days you'll be attacked by a mess of goblins. They'll come
from the five spires, and so they might arrive from five different directions.
Try to survive the attack as well as possible. You'll have a couple of guards,
four rogues, and perhaps a paladin or two. They'll be able to kill the
goblins, but you might lose a building. However, now you'll know the exact
directions every attack in the quest will come from, and so you'll be able to
set up your defenses accordingly. If the goblin attacks come from all four
sides, you might want to start over until you get a map where the goblins only
attack from a couple sides, since that situation will be easier to defend.
These attacks from the spires will come every couple of days, and they'll get
progressively more difficult as your army grows in power. So don't grow your
army. Instead, stay with four paladins and four rogues for a while, and
instead improve your economy and upgrade your buildings. Try to get to a level
three blacksmith quickly so you can add a dwarven settlement and some ballista
towers.
Once you're reasonably confident about your defenses, and once you have a level
three palace and a level three wizard guild, go ahead and start expanding your
army. Train wizards and monks and build another warrior guild so you can add
four more paladins. Then let this group gain experience for a while. You can
add a fairgrounds to help them out, or you can just let them kill the waves of
goblins, rust spiders, and eventually werewolves and vampires.
Once you get your paladins to double digit levels, you should be about ready to
tackle the spires. Build a ranger guild and train some rangers so they'll
explore the map and find the spires. (You don't want to explore the map any
earlier or else your paladins will keep trying to destroy the spires before
you're ready.) Build a temple to agrela if you haven't already, and then add a
mess of ballista towers. A dozen ballista towers is a good idea, and more
might be better.
Why do you need so many ballista towers? Because every time you destroy a
spire, all of the remaining spires (plus the recently destroyed one) will
unleash a whole bunch of spelled-up goblins, and they'll all make a beeline for
your base. Since all of your good fighters will be at the destroyed spire,
you'll need your base to be able to defend itself. You'll also need to hurry.
After a spire is destroyed, it will reappear on the map after four days, and so
you'll have to act quickly to get rid of all the spires -- plus kill all of the
goblins -- before the spires start resurrecting themselves.
The wrong way to destroy the spires is to flag one, fight your way through the
goblins, flag the next, and so on. That will take too long. A better method
is to flag a couple of the spires and hope your heroes split up evenly and
destroy the spires at about the same time. You'll have more goblins attacking
your base, but you'll also have less work to do in the next four days. Then,
after you clear the goblins, you can repeat the process with two more spires,
and then finally destroy the last one.
If your attack force keeps getting bogged down by goblins, you can use call-to-
arms to bring your paladins back to your base and then use gate to send them to
the next spire. That's effective, but the gate spell will cause your sorcerer
to rest for a long time, and so you won't be able to rely on gate alone. If
you have a lot of gold, you can also extend your wizard coverage and cast
lightning storm on the goblins blocking your attack force to clear them out of
the way more quickly. You can also build ballista towers around each of the
spires to help out. Remember, there isn't any sort of time limit here, so you
can prepare as much as you want before attacking the spires.
8.2. Vigil for a Fallen Hero
----------------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy the abomination.
My Best Time:
34 days
Walkthrough:
Take a close look at the restrictions for this quest. You won't be able to
train any heroes, and you won't be able to cast any spells. That means you'll
have to be extra careful with the heroes you start with, and the only way
you'll be able to watch over them is with bounty flags. If you see a hero
fighting all by itself, set attack flags on nearby creatures so more heroes
will come in to help out. This is especially important with the gorgons on the
map, since they'll turn heroes to stone and leave them vulnerable.
There aren't many buildings you can place in this quest, so start out by adding
things your heroes will find useful -- a marketplace so they'll have healing
potions and rings of protection, a blacksmith so they'll be able to improve
their equipment, and an inn or a hall of champions so they'll have a place to
rest. Then get your heroes exploring. Your ranger will probably hook up with
your barbarian, so you'll have to set explore flags.
There are three sets of buildings you can find on the map: a pair of trading
posts, an outpost, and an inn; a sorcerer's abode and a magic bazaar; and an
outpost, a house, and a library. The most important of the trio is the abode
and bazaar, so when you find them immediately start putting down guardhouses to
protect them. At different times during the quest, large groups of minotaurs
and shadow beasts will appear on the map, and it's important to kill them
before they can destroy any buildings that you can't replace. If you have to,
set attack flags with outrageous awards on them to get your heroes involved.
Then it'll just be a matter of exploring the map until you find the
abomination. You'll recognize it when you see it because it'll be big and red.
Put as big a reward as you can on it and hope your heroes bite. I had to go up
to 35,000 gold before my heroes showed much interest. And even with a large
reward you'll probably have to use the change of heart spell a few times to
keep your heroes around. The abomination has a nasty fire attack, but
otherwise it isn't particularly powerful, so if you can get two or three heroes
to attack it at once, you should be able to kill it easily.
The only other things of note on the map are three yeti and a half dozen
ancient graveyards. The yeti are nasty, but your heroes probably won't run
from them. So put big reward flags on any yeti you find to try and attract as
many heroes as possible. Otherwise wandering heroes will try to solo them and
probably get killed in the process. The ancient graveyards are pretty much
non-factors in the quest. You can either have your heroes destroy them or not
and it won't make any difference.
**************************
* 9. DOWNLOADABLE QUESTS *
**************************
9.1. The Wrath of Krolm
-----------------------
Objectives:
1. Destroy all altars to krolm, or
2. Kill the avatar of krolm
My Best Time:
68 days
Walkthrough:
This is a quest where starting out can be difficult. You'll only have two days
before werewolves, barbarians, and more start paying you regular visits. Plus,
you won't start out with a lot of gold, and you'll never make a lot of gold, so
you'll have to plan carefully.
So here's what to do: build a guardhouse, train four thieves, upgrade your
palace, and then build another guardhouse. You should put the guardhouses near
your marketplace or sewer entrances or both, and you should also place them so
they extend your view towards the center of the map. The reason why
guardhouses are useful here is because you won't have time to build a warrior
guild and train a warrior and have that warrior buy potions before the enemy
units arrive. You could build a ranger guild in time, but rangers won't be all
that helpful against the creatures you'll be facing. And so the guardhouses
will help you get through the initial battles, and they'll be useful for your
interior defenses as well.
Then build a warrior guild at the outer edge of your base so that it is nearest
to the center of the map. The idea here is that the warrior guild will end up
being the focus of most enemy attacks, and with its 800 hit points plus the
call-to-arms option, it should always survive. Around the rest of the
perimeter place a temple to dauros, a temple to agrela, and a wizard guild.
You should build the temple to dauros first so you can start training paladins,
and the wizard guild should go next to the warrior guild so it can give you
good spell coverage over your base. Eventually you'll want to bring the wizard
guild to level three so you can cast lightning storm.
In the interior of your base you should put a library and a blacksmith. When
those and your perimeter buildings are in place, then you should build an elven
bungalow. Money will be your primary need in this quest, and the elves will
help with that. By building the bungalow last, you'll force the elven lounge
and gambling hall to sprout up outside your perimeter and act as a buffer when
attacks come.
While you are building up your base, you should try to do some exploring.
There are six altars to krolm on the map, plus a host of creature lairs. Each
time you destroy a creature lair, creatures (usually evil occuli) will appear.
Each time you destroy an altar to krolm, an avatar of krolm will appear. He'll
be huge (4000 hit points the first time you see him but fewer after that),
he'll summon a bunch of fairly wimpy creatures (such as harpies and wolves)
every few minutes, and he'll invoke rage-of-krolm. Luckily, he'll leave after
he suffers enough damage, so get your paladins after him and watch the combat
so you can heal as needed. Also, each time he summons creatures, they'll start
out in a bunch, and that's when you should hit them with a lightning storm
spell. Since the creatures won't have many hit points, one storm should either
kill them outright or severely wound them making them easier kills for your
other units.
Once you destroy all six altars to krolm, the mission will end. If you're
organized, the trick to the mission is to destroy multiple altars at once.
Then you can skip some appearances by the avatar and save some time and grief.
However, this strategy is difficult (or perhaps impossible) with paladins since
they'll go out and attack lairs on their own, and you'll only have so much
money to call them back with call-to-arms.
9.2. Balance of Twilight
------------------------
Objectives:
1. Find and restore the ancient sage
2. Resanctify the Shrine of Light
3. Destroy the black phantoms
My Best Time:
46+ days
Walkthrough:
It will take three days before creatures will start attacking you, but once
they do come, they'll be fairly nasty -- with black phantoms as the main menace
but also werewolves and trolls to make your life difficult as well. Because of
the black phantoms, you won't really have a choice for this quest; you'll have
to use dwarves, and you'll have to get to them as quickly as possible.
So, to start out, build a ranger guild. Then, while you're training four
rangers, build a second marketplace and an inn, and research and upgrade the
blacksmith. Once you have four rangers, upgrade the palace to level two, and
then research and upgrade the blacksmith again to make it level three. Dwarves
should become available, and so you should add their settlement as quickly as
possible. Place it on the perimeter of your kingdom, somewhere near the
middle.
After three days, all of the lairs on the map -- and there are several -- will
start producing creatures, so you'll have about three and a half days before
they'll arrive. Your dwarven settlement should already be in place, but it
probably won't be enough by itself, so add a ballista or two if you have time.
Then, when the creatures start arriving, try to get your rangers to attack the
goblins while your dwarven settlement and ballista towers take out the trolls
and werewolves.
After four days, the Shrine of Evil will show up on the map. Mark its location
well because from now on three black phantoms will continually attack your
base. Killing them will only send them back to the shrine to repeat the
process. The phantoms will travel in a straight line when they move from the
shrine to your base, so figure out where they'll attack and put some ballista
towers there. If your dwarven settlement is close enough to help out, then
you'll only need two or three ballista towers (plus the settlement) to defend
against the phantoms.
Now that you know where the black phantom attacks will come from, start
expanding your base (avoiding the phantom area). The dauros / agrella temple
duo is probably the best choice here because you'll need to be proactive during
the remainder of the quest, both in exploring the map and destroying lairs. Be
sure to keep your ranger guild full, and also build a rogue guild so you'll
have rogues to go after flags.
The ancient sage will be in a mausoleum on the opposite corner of the map.
He'll actually be a level 50 wizard, and it'll cost you 50,000 gold to
resurrect him. So while you're building up your base and creating heroes, also
build a third marketplace, and then, once you've cleared away enough lairs, add
an outpost / ballista tower / trading post group to generate even more gold.
Once you find the mausoleum and resurrect the wizard, he'll walk to the Shrine
of Light. You won't be able to cast winged feet on him, so you'll just have to
wait for him to trudge his way across the map. Once the wizard enters the
shrine... I don't know what happens. The game always crashes at this point for
me. But the remainder of the quest should be pretty easy because all you'll
have to do is kill the phantoms, and you'll have been doing that for the entire
quest.
*******************
* 10. CHEAT CODES *
*******************
To use a cheat code, press , type the phrase on the left, and then press
again. You'll receive the result on the right.
Cheezy towers: wizard spells can be cast anywhere
Fill this bag: receive 10,000 gold
Give me power: all spells become available
Grow up: selected hero receives five levels
Planet fargo: hear a funny song (Majesty NE only)
Victory is mine: win the quest
*******************
* 11. EASTER EGGS *
*******************
Select a unit or building and press the "-key. You'll usually hear something
funny.
***********************
* 12. VERSION HISTORY *
***********************
Version 1.7
-----------
Submitted:
June 14, 2001
Notes:
Added a walkthrough (of sorts) for the downloadable quest ``Balance of
Twilight'' (9.2).
Version 1.6
-----------
Submitted:
April 21, 2001
Notes:
Discovered belatedly that you can destroy some of your own buildings (thanks,
Goldy) so I updated two walkthroughs: ``The Dark Forest'' (5.2) and ``A Clash
of Empires'' (6.1). Also improved the walkthrough for ``The Siege'' (7.3).
Version 1.5
-----------
Submitted:
April 12, 2001
Notes:
Expanded the introduction. Improved the walkthrough for ``The Fortress of
Ixmil.''
Version 1.4
-----------
Submitted:
April 11, 2001
Notes:
Added the two master Majesty NE quest walkthroughs. Added cheat codes and an
easter egg.
Version 1.3
-----------
Submitted:
April 10, 2001
Notes:
Added the remaining two advanced Majesty NE quest walkthroughs. Added the four
expert Majesty NE quest walkthroughs. Added a table of contents.
Version 1.2
-----------
Submitted:
April 7, 2001
Notes:
Added a technical note regarding Majesty NE. Updated the money gameplay tip to
include trading posts. Set up the document to support Majesty NE. Added three
advanced Majesty NE quest walkthroughs.
Version 1.1
-----------
Submitted:
February 17, 2001
Notes:
Fixed some doc-to-txt tabbing ugliness.
Version 1.0
-----------
Submitted:
February 16, 2001
Notes:
Initial version. Added walkthroughs for the advanced and expert quests
included with Majesty FKS as well as a walkthrough for the downloadable quest
``The Wrath of Krolm.''
*******************************
* 13. PERMISSIONS AND UPDATES *
*******************************
This guide may be posted on any web site as long as the text is not changed and
as long as I am informed of the posting. I will always submit new versions to
GameFAQs (www.gamefaqs.com) first, so if you are looking for the most up-to-
date version of this guide, that is the place to look.
*****
Copyright © 2001 by Steven W. Carter
and
Majesty: the Northern Expansion
Walkthroughs of Advanced, Expert and Master Quests
(Plus Some Other Information)
By Steven W. Carter
(scarter831@earthlink.net)
Last Updated
June 14, 2001
*********************
* TABLE OF CONTENTS *
*********************
1. Introduction
2. Technical Note
3. Gameplay Notes
3.1. Casting Spells on Your Heroes
3.2. Defenses
3.3. Making Money
4. Majesty FKS Advanced Quests
4.1. A Deal with the Demon
4.2. Elven Treachery
4.3. Free the Slaves
4.4. Hold Off the Goblin Hordes
4.5. Quest for the Crown
4.6. Quest for the Magic Ring
5. Majesty FKS Expert Quests
5.1. Brashnard's Ultimate Sphere of Power
5.2. The Dark Forest
5.3. The Day of Reckoning
5.4. The Fertile Plain
5.5. Slay the Mighty Dragon
5.6. Tomb of the Dragon King
5.7. Vengeance of the Liche Queen
6. Majesty NE Advanced Quests
6.1. The Clash of Empires
6.2. The Fortress of Ixmil
6.3. Rise of the Ratmen
6.4. Trade Routes
6.5. Urban Renewal
7. Majesty NE Expert Quests
7.1. Darkness Falls
7.2. Legendary Heroes
7.3. The Siege
7.4. The Valley of the Serpents
8. Majesty NE Master Quests
8.1. Spires of Death
8.2. Vigil for a Fallen Hero
9. Downloadable Quests
9.1. The Wrath of Krolm
9.2. Balance of Twilight
10. Cheat Codes
11. Easter Eggs
12. Version History
13. Permissions and Updates
*******************
* 1. INTRODUCTION *
*******************
This is mostly intended to be a resource for people having trouble solving the
advanced, expert, and master quests of Majesty: the Fantasy Kingdom Sim
(Majesty FKS) and its expansion pack, Majesty: the Northern Expansion (Majesty
NE). In the sections below I'll provide fairly detailed walkthroughs for the
quests, and I'll also give some (hopefully) useful playing tips. I used
version 1.3 for Majesty FKS and 1.1.0.7 for Majesty NE.
I've also included my best playing times for each quest. You can use these
times as a frame of reference for how you're doing -- or for entertainment
value in the case of ``Wrath of Krolm.'' I think my times qualify as good but
not great.
If you read my walkthroughs and they don't work for you, or if you'd simply
like to see other approaches or more information for the quests, there are a
few web pages that you might find useful. The official Majesty web site
(http://www.majestyquest.com) has forums where you can ask questions, but
please do a search first to see if people have already discussed the topics
you're interested in. Two good unofficial sites are Your Majesty's Castle
(http://www.sngaming.com/majesty) and the Majesty Command Center
(http://www.majestyonline.cc). Both have (or will have) walkthroughs for the
quests.
*********************
* 2. TECHNICAL NOTE *
*********************
If you started up Majesty NE and were dismayed to see all of your high scores
and playing times gone, don't despair. There's an easy method to restore your
data.
Do the following:
1. Go to the directory where you installed Majesty NE and delete the files
hiscores.sav and questdata_majx.sav.
2. Go to the directory where you installed Majesty FKS and copy the files
hiscores.sav and questdata.sav.
3. Go back to the directory where you installed Majesty NE and paste the two
files you just copied.
4. Now just rename questdata.sav (in the Majesty NE directory) to
questdata_majx.sav.
Everything should be restored. Note, though, that this will erase anything you
might have done in Majesty NE before copying and pasting the files.
*********************
* 3. GAMEPLAY NOTES *
*********************
3.1 Casting Spells on Your Heroes
---------------------------------
Even at the best of times it is difficult to select units. And during combat,
when you want to cast heal or invisibility or some other spell on one of your
heroes, it can be almost impossible. You'll be just as likely to cast the
spell on an enemy unit as you will be to cast it on your own.
However, there is a way to get around this. Instead of selecting the spell and
then clicking on the unit, you can select the unit, then select the spell, and
then click on the unit's portrait on the interface bar on the left side of the
screen. It might still be difficult to initially select the unit, but at least
this way you'll never miss.
3.2 Defenses
------------
For your perimeter defense, don't rely on guardhouses. They are expensive and
incredibly weak, and there are numerous creatures that can destroy them single-
handedly. The only time I use guardhouses on the perimeter is to protect a
wizard guild. The guardhouse still won't stop anything, but it gives wizards
something to hide behind as they attack the enemy.
Instead, use your guilds on the perimeter, and especially those guilds that
have lots of hit points. The perfect choice is the warrior guild. It has 800
hit points, and, if creatures attack nearby and none of your heroes respond,
you can always use the call-to-arms option to bring your warriors home to quash
the threat. Dwarven settlements are also a good selection.
The place to use guardhouses is in your interior defense. Specifically, you
should put them next to your marketplaces to protect them against trolls, and
you should put them next to sewers to prevent sewer rats from killing your
peasants and tax collectors.
3.3 Making Money
----------------
The best building for generating gold is (without surprise) the marketplace.
The important thing to realize about marketplaces is that they initially
produce 250 gold per game day (before modifications and item sales), and each
upgrade only adds 50 gold per day. That means it is far more profitable to
have, for example, three level one marketplaces than one level three
marketplace. They'll cost about the same but the former will produce over
twice as much gold as the latter.
The exception to the rule occurs with trading posts. The level of the
destination marketplace is the multiplier used on the amount of gold carried by
caravans, and so you want all of your destination marketplaces to be level
three.
One often overlooked money building is the inn. One inn will produce 100 gold
per game day, and, given its low cost, will quickly start making you a profit.
Inns also grow slowly in cost, so you can put down half a dozen inns and start
making a profit with all of them within a game week. Plus, inns can give you a
fountain early in the game, and that has beneficial effects as well.
**********************************
* 4. MAJESTY FKS ADVANCED QUESTS *
**********************************
4.1. A Deal with the Demon
--------------------------
Objective:
1. Accumulate 100,000 gold within 40 days.
My Best Time:
27 days
Walkthrough:
There will be several creature lairs on the map, and your palace is going to
start somewhere near the middle of the map -- all of which means you're going
to have company at your base quickly. Luckily, you will have a temple of
krypta, a warrior guild, and a wizard guild at your disposal. Wizards are too
fragile for this quest, so train a pair of warriors and a pair of priestesses,
and then upgrade your palace to level two. Meanwhile, also build a marketplace
and, once you get a feel for where attacks will come from or see where the
sewers pop up, a guardhouse or two.
Your buildings start out in three groups on the map: your main base in the
middle somewhere, a warrior guild all alone on one edge, and a trio of
buildings on another edge. The trio isn't especially important, so if it
doesn't happen to end up right next to your main base, forget about it and let
it be destroyed. (But remember to take it off your repair and tax routes
first.) The warrior guild is easy to protect since you can use call-to-arms,
and if it far away from your base go ahead and put a guardhouse and a trading
post next to it. Trading posts are really useful on this map, but only put
them where they will be safe.
You don't really need to do a lot with your heroes for this quest. Don't worry
about upgrading your wizard guild or researching at your blacksmith. Just
create another priestess and warrior and let them do their thing, replacing
them if necessary. Whenever they happen to uncover a creature lair, put an
attack flag on it and let them destroy it.
So spend most of the time during the first 10 or so years building up
marketplaces and inns, with a guardhouse or two thrown in for defense and for
shortening tax routes. I recommend you put up three marketplaces (with at
least one at level three) and four or five inns (for the extra income and a
fountain). And be sure to build an elven bungalow as soon as possible. With
those buildings and perhaps a trading post or two, you should make 5-6k a day.
Then you can just sit back and watch your heroes at work for about 15 days
until you have 100,000 gold.
Note: If you're really desperate in this quest, you can always ``cheat'' and
use save-and-restore with the gambling house. Just save before you gamble,
save every time you win, and restore every time you don't. If you’re patient,
you'll gain the gold you need with few game days passing.
4.2. Elven Treachery
--------------------
Objectives:
1. Destroy all elven buildings and units within 30 days, or
2. Accumulate 50,000 gold within 30 days.
My Best Time:
23 days
Walkthrough:
I'll give walkthroughs for both possible objectives, but first a note about elf
heroes: they have a thing about guardhouses that shoot arrows. If they see
one, they'll just run away. So defending your base is pretty easy in this
quest: just space out some guardhouses along the perimeter of your base.
The first way to solve the quest is to generate 50,000 gold. This is a pretty
boring and wimpy solution, but it is the easiest. Start out by building a
gnome hovel, and then place a couple of guardhouses at the most obvious routes
into your base. Then build a ranger guild and train four rangers so you can
upgrade your palace to level two. Then just finish placing perimeter
guardhouses, and put three marketplaces and as many inns as you can fit into
your corner of the map. Then just crank up the speed setting and twiddle your
thumbs for 10-15 minutes. You should generate over 2000 gold per day and build
up 50,000 gold before Day 30 (but not by much).
The more exciting solution to the quest is to kill all of the elves and destroy
their buildings. Once again build a gnome hovel first, and then build a couple
guardhouses to defend your base and keep the enemy elves from picking off your
peasants. Next build a ranger guild, a warrior guild, a blacksmith, and a
marketplace. Begin training and researching, and upgrade your palace when you
can. Don't train beyond four units yet because your units will probably get
killed at this point. They don't seem to have a problem fighting against
multiple enemies at once, and warriors are slower than elves and will get
killed when they try to flee.
Instead, let your guardhouses do the bulk of the work in protecting your base
while you build temples to agrela and dauros, and then start creating paladins.
Don't train any monks or healers, but upgrade the temple to agrela to level
three so you can help out your units if they get into trouble. Also during
this period, it's a good idea to build another marketplace and some inns, and
to upgrade your blacksmith so your paladins will have good equipment. You
might also want to build another warrior guild or two, just to finish the
mission more quickly.
Then it's just a matter of search and destroy for your paladins. Keep training
/ resurrecting rangers until you find four groups of elf buildings, and then
just set attack flags on the enemy buildings one at a time until they're all
gone. One enemy building of interest is the elven hideout. It contains 15,000
gold in its coffers, and the units who destroy it will be able to afford all
the equipment they want.
4.3. Free the Slaves
--------------------
Objectives:
1. Destroy the four slave pits.
2. Kill Url-Shekk.
My Best Time:
16 days
Walkthrough:
Enemy forces won't arrive at your base for a while, so start out by getting
your economy rolling. Quickly put a marketplace next to the entrance to your
palace, and place a warrior guild next to the marketplace to protect it. Place
the warrior guild right away so the incoming gnome hovels won't get in the way.
Then train a couple gnomes and four rogues, and advance your palace to level
two.
Next, build a blacksmith to reduce the cost of future buildings, research
healing potions at the marketplace, and place a guardhouse in a useful place
(such as next to the sewer that will probably have appeared). All of this
should take about a day and tap your funds.
Now, as your gold permits, add a ranger guild and start training rangers and
warriors. On days 2 and 4 you'll receive gold from a neighboring kingdom (4000
gold in total), and you can use this to help in training units and also to
upgrade your rogue guild and marketplace. Then proceed to build up your base
normally.
Let your rangers do their thing, and eventually they'll find a slave pit. You
might also want to put out some explore flags so your rogues will help out.
Then just put an attack flag on the pit, and your rogues and warriors will get
to work. Once the pit is destroyed, you'll receive some units as
reinforcements. These units can be paladins, gnomes, warriors of discord, and
priestesses. They don't need a home temple or guild, but make sure you have at
least one inn so they'll have a place to rest.
There are three more pits somewhere on the map, and there is also an outpost
(containing three houses and a trading post) for you to find. I ignored the
outpost and let it supply me with gold while it lasted (which wasn't terribly
long). If you want to protect it, place a warrior guild next to it and use
call-to-arms whenever there is trouble.
After you destroy the second pit, a large wave of rats and other wimpy
creatures will swarm at your base. Use call-to-arms to bring your warriors
home, and place attack flags on various enemies to get your other units
interested. It's not a bad idea to have a couple guardhouses at key points in
your base, but four warriors can take down the entire attack on their own
(albeit slowly) so guardhouses aren't really necessary, and you can use your
gold on more units instead.
Before destroying the last pit, make sure you have a temple to agrela and four
healers trained. When Url-Shekk appears, he'll wander around the map for a
while, but finally he'll stop in a place and fight. He has a fast but weak
ranged fire attack, and if you have a healer in the area, she'll be able to
heal faster than Url-Shekk can damage your units. Then it's just a matter of
putting a big bounty on his head and getting enough of your units to him to
kill him. He only has 255 hit points, and your warriors and paladins should be
able to kill him even if your healers don't get involved.
4.4. Hold Off the Goblin Hordes
-------------------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy all goblin settlements.
My Best Time:
9 days
Walkthrough:
You'll come under attack almost immediately, but you'll still have some things
going for you: two guardhouses, two warriors of discord, and some allied
wizards. Plus you'll have 15,000 gold, and the allied wizards will donate
about 6000 more gold to your cause during the first four days. So you'll have
the means and necessity to get started quickly.
Unfortunately, you can't build gnome hovels during this quest, but your palace
will start out at level two, and so you'll have four peasants right away. Put
them to work on a marketplace (next to your warrior guild), and while that's in
progress move your ranger guild closer to your palace, research arrows for the
guardhouses, build a wizard guild, and train warriors and rangers. Then put a
blacksmith and library wherever is convenient, and build a rogue guild and
upgrade it as well.
Train a full complement of units for each guild and let them pretty much work
on their own while you upgrade and research at your library, blacksmith, and
marketplace. If your units stumble across a goblin lair, put an attack flag on
it and it won't last long.
You'll be under constant attacks from the goblins, so most of your forces will
stay at your base to defend it. But a few units (like the rogues) will venture
out to destroy flagged lairs. There are only 15 goblin lairs, and it won't
take too long to destroy them all.
Just ignore the starting inn since it isn't useful enough to protect from the
goblins. You can also ignore the allied wizards. On Day 5 their guild will
stop being invulnerable, but wizards are pretty good about killing goblins, and
they should be able to take care of themselves -- and perhaps even help you out
by destroying a nearby goblin lair or two.
There aren't any surprises in the quest. You just need to explore and destroy.
4.5. Quest for the Crown
------------------------
Objective:
1. Find and destroy the crown's tower.
My Best Time:
20 days
Walkthrough:
Incoming! You'll immediately be attacked by 15 minotaurs, and your goal in the
first few minutes of the quest should be to minimize the damage as much as
possible. To that end, start cranking out units right away, and if you see
minotaurs approaching one of your wizard towers, enchant it so it can defend
itself. Meanwhile, build a marketplace somewhere that looks safe and upgrade
it to sell potions so your heroes will last longer.
You will have good wizard spell coverage at the start of the quest, so take
advantage of it. Upgrade your wizard guild to level three, and wherever you
see three or more minotaurs together, give them a zap with a lightning storm.
The minotaurs will attack in three groups of five at the start, and a couple of
well-placed spells can really decimate their numbers.
Once you hold off the initial onslaught, the quest should be pretty
straightforward. You just have to find the tower with the crown in it. The
tower is probably in one of the corners of the map, and it will be guarded by
two evil occuli. So if you find an occulus during your explorations, set
explore flags in the area until you find the tower, and then flag the tower
itself.
While the search for the tower is going on, simply build up your base like
normal, and do whatever upgrading and researching you can. There are two elven
outposts on the map, and they'll join your kingdom when you find them. That
should give you enough of a boost to your economy to allow you to build all the
heroes you need. There are also a handful of creature lairs that you can
destroy if you want.
Once you destroy the crown's tower, nothing bad happens. The quest simply
ends.
4.6. Quest for the Magic Ring
-----------------------------
Objective:
1. Recover the ring of healing.
My Best Time:
17 days
Walkthrough:
You'll start with a temple to helia, so go ahead and start training four
solarii while you construct your base. Put down a blacksmith first and then a
marketplace. By that time you should have your four solarii so upgrade your
palace to level two. When the elves offer to join your kingdom, let them and
build an elven bungalow.
There is another kingdom on the map, and they'll be allied with you. In fact,
on Day 4 they will even give you some gold. Take advantage by building another
marketplace and doing some upgrades. Eventually you should build a ranger
guild, a warrior guild, a temple to agrela and a temple to dauros. Let your
rangers explore the map while you train paladins, and also upgrade your temple
to agrela to level three so you can help out your units.
Eventually somebody will find the tower with the ring in it. It will be
guarded by some daemonwood, but your solarii or paladins should be able to
handle them (perhaps will a few spells from you). Once you then destroy the
tower, all sorts of bad things will happen. The allied kingdom will turn
against you, and so you'll suddenly have to fight them. Plus, three black
phantoms will appear at the site of the tower, and their spells will probably
be able to kill most of your units. Lastly, a special item box (the ring) will
appear on the ground next to the black phantoms.
All you have to do at this point is grab the box and make a dash to the
``hidden ring site'' that will appear somewhere else on the map (usually in the
middle somewhere). The problem is that most your units will run from the black
phantoms and never get to the box. If you're unlucky, you'll have to fight the
black phantoms and go through a lot of units / resurrections before killing
them. If you're lucky, some enterprising unit will dodge the phantoms and grab
the ring. In my best game, my toughest solarii happened to die right next to
the ring box, and so once the phantoms wandered away a little, I resurrected
her and she grabbed the ring and dropped it off. In another game, one of my
heroes grabbed the ring right after the tower fell, and it delivered the ring
during the confusion. So you have a few options, and you might want to save
your game right before attacking the tower just in case the black phantoms
really do a number on you.
Note: If you have problems with the other kingdom claiming the ring before you
can, your best option is probably to destroy the kingdom before attacking the
ring tower. They don't upgrade their buildings or do any research as far as I
can tell, and so they're not difficult to defeat.
********************************
* 5. MAJESTY FKS EXPERT QUESTS *
********************************
5.1. Brashnard's Ultimate Sphere of Power
-----------------------------------------
Objective:
1. Locate and acquire the seven shards of Brashnard's Sphere.
My Best Time:
26 days
Walkthrough:
You'll start out with two temples to krolm on either side of your palace.
Immediately start training barbarians; you'll come under attack from a
multitude of spiders, spitters, and undead very soon. While you're training,
build a marketplace next to the entrance to your palace and place a guardhouse
next to it to protect it. Then upgrade your palace to level two.
As soon as you see enemy creatures, and as soon as you have six barbarians, use
rage-of-krolm. Rage-of-krolm is expensive, but it should prevent some of your
barbarians from dying, it should prevent a bunch of graveyards from littering
your base, and it should hopefully give you some veteran units when the first
wave of attacks is over. I used it three times during the first wave, and I
only lost one barbarian (as opposed to about 10 when I didn't use it).
Now work on your base and do things that will help out your barbarians. Make
sure your marketplace sells potions. Build a blacksmith and research weapons
and armor. Add a wizard guild so you can cast invisibility. Then get to work
adding another marketplace and some inns so you can make money, and build a
ranger guild and rogue guild so you can explore the map. Keep replacing your
barbarians as necessary so you always have eight.
Note that rangers will follow and support barbarians, so they won't explore the
map as well as they usually do. You'll have to use explore flags, and you
might want to build a second rogue guild just so you'll explore more quickly.
The shard shrines are usually located along the edge of the map, so that's
where you should put the flags.
Each time you destroy a shard shrine, a magic item box will fall to the ground
and some enemy creatures will appear. The creatures won't be very powerful
(harpies, hellboars, and so forth) but the magic items will be nice. You'll
probably have the most problems fighting the shrine guards, which can include
rock golems, evil occuli, and dragons. But just throw your heroes at them
until they fall. Once you've destroyed all seven shrines, you'll automatically
put the shards together to form the sphere (even if your heroes aren't holding
all the shards), and the mission will end.
5.2. The Dark Forest
--------------------
Objectives:
1. Cure your kingdom.
2. Kill the witch king.
My Best Time:
27 days
Walkthrough:
You'll start out with just a warrior guild, and you won't be able to build any
other guilds or temples until you find the nearby temple to fervus. But that's
ok; no enemy creatures will attack you for a while, and so you can start
working on your economy. Surround your palace with three marketplaces, a
blacksmith, and three or four inns (as many as fit in).
Only train one more warrior, and set explore flags around your base. Your
warriors will either find a message stump or a statue. The stump will lie
directly in line between your palace and the temple to fervus, and there will
be four statues surrounding the temple. So either discovery will tip you off
to the location of the temple, and you should set more explore flags as
necessary.
Once you find the temple to fervus, you'll need to make a choice. You can
either keep the temple and then use warriors of discord and priestesses, or you
can destroy the temple and use paladins and healers. I prefer the latter
combination, and so I decided to destroy the temple.
Once you have four heroes, upgrade your palace and build an elven bungalow.
You should now have a significant stream of money coming in, so put it to use.
Build up your base and start cranking out heroes. Add a ranger guild first so
your rangers can help you explore the map. You should also set explore flags
around the edges of the map (and particularly in the corners) to find enemy
lairs and the witch king's tower. Destroy any lairs and creatures you find,
and then focus on the tower.
Surrounding the tower you'll find several daemonwood. Put attack flags on them
to draw your paladins / warriors of discord to the area. Finish off the
daemonwood and then destroy the tower.
When the tower falls, the witch king will appear on the map (but not where the
tower was) and all the daemonwood you haven't killed yet (on all parts of the
map) will head for your base. The witch king will continually create spiders,
so even if you haven't explored the entire map yet, it shouldn't take too long
to figure out where he is. Once you do, put a huge bounty on his head and
watch your heroes rush to greet him. Use heal and resurrect spells as
necessary, but it shouldn't be too difficult to kill him. Two mid- to high-
level paladins can do the job with no problem.
5.3. The Day of Reckoning
-------------------------
Objective:
1. Survive.
My Best Time:
22 days
Walkthrough:
This is a difficult and annoying quest. It's difficult because you'll face all
of the super bad guys from the earlier quests -- the witch king, liche queen,
Vendral and so forth -- and it's annoying because your base will be spread out,
there will be houses all over the place getting in the way and distracting your
henchmen, and random lightning bolts will damage your buildings and kill your
units.
It's depressing to try and write a walkthrough and say something like you'll
need a good amount of luck on your side to win, but there you go. You'll need
some luck. You could use a good strategy five times and only have it work once
(or at least that's my experience). If lightning bolts keep killing your
peasants and tax collectors, if your starting heroes decide to run instead of
fight, if spiders swarm on two sides of your base and all your heroes go to
only one side, then you're probably going to lose. Luckily, when you lose,
you'll tend to lose early, and so you can start again without investing too
much time in a lost effort.
But, anyway, when you start the mission you'll have a base in the center of the
map with a couple dozen houses surrounding it. Several minotaurs and a cyclops
will already be at your houses, wailing away at them as they head towards your
palace. Fortunately, you'll start out with two level 50 heroes, a warrior and
a wizard, and they'll usually head straight for the attackers even if you don't
set any bounty flags on them. If you can find the wizard early enough, it's
not a bad idea to make him invisible so he'll stay in battle longer before
fleeing.
While your heroes are off defending the realm, you'll need to do three things:
1. Start training heroes at your three existing guilds. Usually I'd wait for a
library before training wizards, but in this case the only enemies your wizards
will really be useful against are the spiders you'll see in the second wave.
Most of the other enemies you'll face will either be highly magic resistant or
have the magic mirror spell. So get some wizards training early, and keep all
of your guilds full.
2. Start building your base. This will be tricky because of all the houses,
and so you probably won't be able to place buildings in a circle around your
palace. My best suggestion is to go for your economy first by putting down
three marketplaces. Only upgrade one of the marketplaces to level three unless
you find that one of the others really needs the extra hit points. Then you
can add in a rogue guild so your rogues can help you explore the map and a
second warrior guild for defense. Later you can add things like a library and
a blacksmith and at least one inn (so you'll get a fountain), plus a guardhouse
or two to guard against sewer entrances and to protect your marketplaces.
3. Figure out how you want to deal with all of the houses. It's a pain to go
through them all and take them off your repair and tax routes, but that's
probably the best plan. Certainly you should take them off the repair route so
your peasants will concentrate on building your base, but it's difficult to
ignore the money the houses will generate since you'll need so much during the
quest. You could always compromise and leave the closest homes on your tax
route and then use extortion to get the gold from the rest (but only when your
marketplaces are empty). Regardless, you'll also need to select all of your
tax collectors and change their minimum pick-up amount to something more
substantial, like 500 gold, so they won't waste time on houses and inns when
your marketplaces are stockpiling gold.
You probably won't be able to get all of the above done before the second wave
of attacks arrives in the middle of Day 2, but keep working at it. The second
wave will feature the witch king and three evil occuli, and they'll show up on
the map when they arrive (plus the king will taunt you). None of the four will
attack your base, so you'll have to go out and get them. It's especially
important to kill the king because he'll continually spawn spiders, and the
spiders, while wimpy alone, will take down buildings quickly if they're allowed
to swarm. They're especially dangerous to any outposts you've managed to find
because those will tend to be lightly guarded, if guarded at all.
The best way to kill the witch king is to set a huge bounty on his head and
hope for the best. The king will use the magic mirror spell, and so your level
50 wizard will be useless against him, but your level 50 warrior will be able
to do the job. So try to get him interested, and also try to get your other
units involved by setting some attack flags on any spiders that are nearby.
They might attack the spiders and then stick around to help with the king. Or
maybe not. For me the witch king is the most difficult creature in the quest
to kill, and I never get him until about the fourth wave.
Meanwhile, try to get your rangers and thieves to explore the map, and as soon
as you find a temple to dauros or a temple to fervus, immediately go up to
three warrior guilds and start training paladins or warriors of discord. You
might lose the temples, especially if the witch king is still around, and so
you need to take advantage of them as quickly as possible. And if you find the
dwarven settlement, place a trading post next to it. The settlement will be
able to protect the trading post from most attacks.
After six and a half days, three black phantoms will appear. Phantoms aren't
any fun at all. They're resistant to magic and they have a nasty fire attack.
The best way to kill them is through ballista towers as the phantoms chase your
fleeing heroes back to your base. If you haven't found the dwarves yet, then
you'll just have to muddle through the wave by sending lots of heroes at the
phantoms and hoping for the best. If you happen to fight them within your
wizard spell range, you can try casting anti-magic shield on the hero you least
want to die, and that might give it a fighting chance.
After eleven and a half days, the next attack will come. This one should be
relatively easy with only the liche queen and several vampires. Put a big
bounty on the queen's head to draw your level 50 heroes, and also put bounties
on some of the skeletons the queen creates so your lesser heroes will help out
as well. Then just pay attention to the combat and heal your heroes as
necessary.
The next wave will come on Day 16 (unannounced), and it will bring back your
old friends, the black phantoms. There will be three of them again, and
they'll have a fire-breathing lizard name Rrongol the Hunter to help them out.
The best way to kill them -- still -- is with ballista towers. In fact, after
spending the gold necessary to keep your three warrior guilds full, you should
spend your remaining gold on ballista towers. Just put a lot of them around
your base, and train three gnomes so they can help out with the repairs.
The last wave will feature several dragons, including Vendral, and come after
19.5 days. There will also be three more black phantoms and Url Shekk. The
more the merrier, right? Fortunately, the dragons will attack from several
different locations, and some will get distracted by your outposts, while the
others will come straight for your base. If you have the gold, use lightning
storm against the dragons so your heroes can focus on the black phantoms. If
you've found and filled all of the outposts, you'll probably have over 50
heroes by this point, and even if you take heavy losses, you should still have
the firepower necessary to defeat the wave.
5.4. The Fertile Plain
----------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy the seven waves of attackers.
My Best Time:
23 days
Walkthrough:
You'll start out with a lot of gold, but you should avoid wasting it. You'll
have three days before the first wave of attackers hits, and so you can
construct your buildings in a cost-efficient order. To that end, first build a
blacksmith south of your palace. When it is complete, put a marketplace next
to it, and put two wizard guilds to the left and right of your palace. Next
build a warrior guild next to one of your wizard guilds (to protect it) and a
temple to dauros next to the other, and start building a library as soon as one
of the wizard guilds completes.
Once the library is complete, you can start researching at your buildings and
start training wizards. With your remaining money, build another marketplace
or two, train paladins and monks, and upgrade your palace to level three. You
should also upgrade one of your wizard guilds to level three so you can use
lightning storm if things begin to look dicey during any of the attack waves.
The first wave will occur after three days and feature goblins attacking from
the north. They're quick and can take down a building or two before your
heroes can even get there to intervene. If you're in danger of losing a
building you don't want to lose, cast lightning storm to wipe the goblins out.
Otherwise, let your heroes do the work so they can gain experience.
The second wave will occur after six days and feature minotaurs attacking from
the south. Before they arrive, you should place a second warrior guild on the
south side of your base and try to train as many paladins as possible. Keep
some gold handy so that if you really need a lightning storm, you'll be able to
afford it.
The third and forth waves will come quickly, with elves attacking from the east
on Day 8 and dwarves from the west on Day 9. Both elves and dwarves are easy
to kill compared to minotaurs, and so these two waves should be a walk in the
park. Just try to keep an eye on your wizards, and cast invisibility if
necessary to keep them alive.
You'll have some time to rest, relax, and work on your base again for the next
few days. Be sure to build a temple to agrela and upgrade it to level three,
and also try to add a third warrior guild. It never hurts to have extra
paladins running around.
The fifth wave will come on Day 15 and have lots of vampires in it. If you're
unlucky, the vampires will come across your wizards before your paladins, and a
few of your wizards will die due to reflected spells. If that happens, don't
resurrect your wizards right away. Wait for the paladins to get to the scene
or at least for the vampires to move away so your wizards won't just go and
kill themselves again. The easiest way to resurrect dead wizards is to click
on the wizard guilds, find the highest level dead wizard in the lists, select
it, and then cast resurrect on the portrait of the wizard on the interface bar.
The sixth wave will come on Day 18 and have minotaurs again, but this time
they'll attack from all four sides. Set attack flags and use call-to-arms at
your warrior guilds (as necessary) to divide up your heroes so they attack all
of the minotaurs, and not just the ones on one or two sides of your base. With
eight wizards, 10+ paladins, plus maybe some monks and healers running around,
this wave should be relatively painless.
The final wave will come on Day 21. It'll have a dozen rock golems plus Dirgo
the Cyclops (whoever that is) attacking from all four sides. Golems have 290
hit points, and they hit pretty hard, but luckily they're as slow as mud.
They’re also susceptible to magic, and this is where your wizards can shine.
Your wizards will be able to kill everything that attacks in this wave all by
themselves -- as long as there's a paladin or a building or something in
between them and the golems. And even if your wizards get into melee range
with the golems, all is not lost. With a ring of protection, wizards can dodge
pretty well, and if they have the meteor swarm spell they can inflict a lot of
damage before dying. Then you can just resurrect the wizard to let him go at
the golem again.
5.5. Slay the Mighty Dragon
---------------------------
Objectives:
1. Find and destroy the hidden sword site.
2. Kill Vendral.
My Best Time:
21 days
Walkthrough:
Vendral will immediately show up on the map and make a beeline for your base.
Don't train any solarii yet; they'll just get killed. Instead, start
researching at your marketplace and blacksmith, and take the fairgrounds and
marketplace off your tax route (to prevent your tax collectors from dying and
losing gold).
Vendral will meander around your base for a day and a half, damaging buildings
and killing peasants. Then he'll leave, and you'll have a few days before he
comes back. So get your base into shape. Put your buildings back on the tax
route, add another marketplace, continue upgrading and researching, and train
four solarii. Also, place explore flags in a circle around your base, evenly
spaced about one (zoomed out) screen away. The solarii will explore on their
own, but they're not as enthusiastic about it as rangers, and so you'll need to
encourage them. They'll sometimes bite on 100-gold explore flags, but usually
it takes 200 gold. Also, don't put down any guardhouses yet, or else your
solarii will just garrison instead of explore.
Eventually, and hopefully quickly, your solarii will stumble upon a group of
buildings that will join your cause. Chances are, the group will include
either a warrior guild or a rogue guild. Regardless, train heroes right away
since they'll go after explore flags much more often than your solarii will.
Quickly spread your units across the map until you find other outposts and the
hidden sword site.
After 7.5 days, Vendral will come back, and he'll have some harpies with him.
You can't do much at this point other than kill the harpies and hope Vendral
doesn't kill too many of your heroes. When your heroes die, don't replace them
because they'll probably just attack Vendral again and die again. Vendral will
leave after four days, and then you can start training heroes again.
You can now go back to exploring the map and building up your forces.
Upgrading your palace is a good idea because Vendral will always go for your
palace when he attacks. You should also upgrade one or more of your temples so
you'll have an offensive spell you can cast anywhere on the map in case one of
your remote buildings comes under attack. And if you find the temple to
agrela, upgrade it fully so you can keep your heroes alive.
There are two buildings on the map that you'll have to find: the sword site (of
course) and the dwarven settlement. Once you destroy the sword site, one of
your heroes will have to pick up the sword and take it to the dwarven
settlement so the dwarves can duplicate the sword for all of your heroes. As
soon as your hero picks up the sword and starts heading to see the dwarves,
Vendral will reappear and attack. He'll arrive with a few dragons, but with
your veteran units, spells to play with, and the powerful heroes that come with
some of the buildings you've found, you shouldn't have much of a problem
killing him. Just set a huge bounty on his head and watch your heroes rush to
take advantage.
5.6. Tomb of the Dragon King
----------------------------
Objectives:
1. Destroy the three lairs, and then
2. Destroy the tomb of the dragon king.
My Best Time:
21 days
Walkthrough:
There are two important things to know about this map before you get started.
The first is that there will only be three creature lairs on the map, and they
will only create dragons. The quicker you can destroy the lairs, the fewer
dragons you'll have to face -- and, more importantly, the fewer you'll have to
face simultaneously.
The second thing to know is that there will be an outpost right next to your
base. This outpost will always be a (zoomed out) screen or so away, and it
will be between your base and the center of the map. The nice thing about the
outpost is that it will contain a trading post with 9000 gold in its coffers.
If you can get that gold right away, fending off early dragon attacks will be
much easier. After you get the gold, the outpost (plus three temples to krolm
located somewhere else on the map) will pretty much be dragon-bait and not
worth protecting.
You'll also need to make a couple of decisions right away. One is to pick the
non-human race you plan to use. I could make an argument for all three races:
dwarves will give you settlements and ballista towers, which will be more
useful here than normal since you can't use guard towers; gnomes will help you
get your base going and also quickly respond to dragon attacks by repairing the
victim buildings; and elves, as always, will give you more gold.
I picked elves. The dwarven defensive structures will only slow down dragons,
and they'll get destroyed if even two dragons attack them. Dragons are also
pretty good about attacking repairers, and that negates much of the usefulness
of gnomes. Elves, on the other hand, never fail to give you more money, and in
this case you can use the extra gold to upgrade your wizard guild and hit
dragons with lightning storms if you need to. Also, the elven lounge will make
it more likely for your priestesses (and their important skeletons) to stay in
your base, and that will help in defense.
The second decision you'll need to make is what to do with your starting ranger
guild. It's all by itself, usually on the other side of the map, and if you
leave it alone a dragon will come by and destroy it after a couple days (taking
any rangers you trained with it since the rangers will try to defend their
home). If you move the guild, it will cost you 800 gold. If you wait for it
to be destroyed and then build a new one, it will only cost you 700 (or less)
gold. So it is cheaper -- and better, I think -- to let the ranger guild go.
If you train rangers right away, they might find a lair for you, but they might
also find the temples to krolm, and you don't want them to do that.
Priestesses and warriors of discord will be your main fighting units for this
quest, and temples of krolm will prevent you from being able to build their
temples.
So with all of the above in mind, here's how to begin the quest. Train four
priestesses. Skeletons are an excellent defense against dragons, and the more
you have, the better. While that is going on, build a rogue guild so you can
train a rogue and send it out to find the outpost. Then build a marketplace,
an inn, and finally, as soon as possible, upgrade your palace to level two.
That will allow you to bring elves into your kingdom.
About this time you should get your 9000 gold. So build an elven bungalow and
put up two more marketplaces. Then, as your resources allow it, build another
temple to krypta, a warrior guild (at the front of your base), and a temple to
fervus. Also upgrade your buildings where possible. Bring all your markets to
level two just so they'll have more hitpoints.
One dragon will appear on the map at the end of the second day. It will first
attack your ranger guild, and, if you've discovered your outpost by then, it
will attack the outpost next. Between the two you should have more than enough
time to train four (and possibly more) priestesses. They should be able to
kill the dragon before it can destroy any of your buildings.
Another dragon will appear on around the fourth day, and it should be as easy
to kill as the first. The real problem will come at the end of the first week
when five or so dragons will descend upon your base. It's definitely a good
idea to have eight priestesses by then, and if you can throw out some warriors
of discord, even better.
Early in the game you might also be attacked by three vampires. They start out
at the location where the dragon king tomb will eventually appear, but
sometimes they wander over to your base. If that happens, put a bounty on
their heads, and between your skeletons and greedy rogues, you should be able
to swarm and kill them.
Once you survive the dragon attack at the end of the first week, build a ranger
guild and get your rangers exploring. You might even want to put some explore
flags out at the far reaches of the map to get your rogues and elves into the
act as well. Eventually they'll find the three lairs. If you're flush with
gold, start training units that will go for reward flags (rogues, of course,
but also warriors and wizards), and set about 500 gold bounties on each lair.
Each time you destroy a lair, some creatures will appear. The evil castle will
produce medusas, the dark castle will produce werewolves, and the ruined keep
will produce dragons. The important thing to note is that when you destroy the
last lair, not only will the dragon king tomb appear, but a few dragons will
appear with it. So you don't want to destroy the ruined keep last, or else
you'll have to fight about ten dragons at once.
Once you destroy the three lairs and kill the dragons, the mission will
essentially be over. The tomb will produce a dragon every so often, but that's
all you'll have to fight. So just pour all of your gold into an attack flag on
the tomb, and get all your heroes to the scene to finish off the tomb as
quickly as possible.
5.7. Vengeance of the Liche Queen
---------------------------------
Objective:
1. Find and kill the liche queen.
My Best Time:
27 days
Walkthrough:
You'll start out with a pair of temples to agrela flanking your palace. Build
a marketplace and train two healers at each temple. When you have four
healers, upgrade your palace to level two. Then get to work on a warrior guild
and a temple to dauros. At the same time, place a wizard guild and then build
a library. Build one more marketplace, and upgrade both to level two, and then
devote the rest of your gold (as you get it) to training paladins until you
have a full warrior guild.
The undead on the map won't really pay you much attention. Every so often the
liche queen will taunt you, and this seems to be the announcement of a skeleton
/ vampire raid. But it's hard to tell. The undead move so slowly that they
might not arrive until a day or so after the taunt. In any case, be prepared.
Once you have your paladins, build a ranger guild and train four rangers to
explore the map. There will be three outposts you can find: one with a rogue
guild, blacksmith, and inn; a second with a warrior guild and inn; and a third
with a dwarven settlement, ballista tower, and inn. I've listed them in the
order you're likely to find them. The dwarven outpost in particular will
usually be the farthest away.
When you find the blacksmith, be sure to guard it. Putting a warrior guild
next to it is a good idea, and a guardhouse or two wouldn't hurt, either.
Also, as long as you don't find the dwarven outpost first, you can bring elves
(after finding an inn) or gnomes into your kingdom, and then find the dwarves
and have them as well. Elves will be more useful than gnomes in this quest
because the pace will be slow, and you might have to spend a lot of money on
warrior guilds and paladins.
As your rangers uncover the map, let your paladins destroy any lairs that
become visible. Eventually, on the other side of the map, you'll find the
liche queen's tower. It should be easy to spot. There will be lots of
skeletons and vampires and two graveyards nearby. If you built a warrior guild
at your main base, found another at an outpost, and built a third next to the
blacksmith, put a huge bounty on the queen's tower to get all twelve of your
paladins involved. When they destroy the tower, the liche queen will appear,
plus a few of her vampire friends. Your lower level heroes will probably run
away, but as long as a few of your paladins stay you should be able to kill the
vampires and queen easily. But if you have trouble, feel free to construct
some ballista towers around the tower before attacking it so you'll have some
extra help.
*********************************
* 6. MAJESTY NE ADVANCED QUESTS *
*********************************
6.1. The Clash of Empires
-------------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy the goblin and ratman lairs.
My Best Time:
15 days
Walkthrough:
You won't come under attack for 2-3 days, so you'll have time to set up your
base. In fact, you'll have enough time so that you don't have to use the
temple to fervus if you don't want to. Since you'll be fighting a lot of wimpy
creatures, paladins will be overkill but priestesses won't get around quickly
enough. The best choice seems to be barbarians.
So you'll first need to upgrade your palace to level two. To that end, first
build a ranger guild, and, while you're training four rangers, put down a
second marketplace. Then upgrade your palace and add an inn, an elven
bungalow, and a third marketplace. You'll now have enough money coming in to
continually add barbarians and temples to krolm. Don't stop until you have
four temples, but take some time out from building and training to use the
rage-of-krolm function every so often.
You'll have a lot of barbarians running around, but you might want to add a
couple of guardhouses anyway, just to guard against sewers and early attacks.
Since barbarians usually don't buy anything, you won't have to build things
like a blacksmith or a magic bazaar, or upgrade your marketplace beyond selling
potions (for your rangers mostly). If you feel like it and have money you
don't know what to do with, you can also add rogues, warriors, and wizards
since they'll go for reward flags.
Eventually, it'll just be a matter of search and destroy. Ratmen and goblins
aren't very tough, and your barbarians should be able to plow through them
quickly. But try to balance your attacks against the two groups since they'll
fight each other and help you out (as opposed to only attacking one group and
leaving the other group only one target -- you).
Every so often, groups of ratmen and goblins will appear together on the map,
fight each other, and then fight you. Also, pairs of goblin towers or sewer
mains will appear near your base. But none of these events should pose much of
a problem.
6.2. The Fortress of Ixmil
--------------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy Ixmil's fortress.
My Best Time:
26 days
Walkthrough:
You'll have three or four days before you'll come under attack, so I think the
best strategy is to get your economy going first and then worry about your
heroes. So put down a marketplace next to your palace, then add a ranger
guild, and then while you’re training four rangers, add a second marketplace.
Then upgrade your palace to level two.
Now add a warrior guild and a temple to dauros, and start cranking out
paladins. The more paladins, the better, so add a second and third warrior
guild when you can. Wizards will also be useful in this quest, but don't worry
about upgrading the wizard guild. Instead, add a sorcerer's abode and upgrade
that to level three. The best place to put the abode is right next to a
warrior guild so you can use call-to-arms in conjunction with gate to get your
paladins to locations quickly.
Every time the fortress appears, you'll get an audio cue (that sounds like a
spaceship) and the fortress will show up on the map even if it's in an area you
haven't explored yet. The fortress will be surrounded by poisonous plants and
daemonwood, so even if you flag it the first time you see it, your heroes will
run away. Plus, the fortress will defend itself with magical attacks (like a
wizard tower). So wait until you have some mid-level paladins before you make
a concerted effort to attack the fortress.
Also, every time the fortress appears, it'll release a wave of creatures.
These can range from undead to ratmen to minotaurs to dragons. I think the
dragons only appear later in the quest, but you might see a couple of vampires
right off the bat. Early in the mission you'll have to rely on your
guardhouses because pairs of vampires will kill just about everything else
(which is another reason to focus on your economy early).
Then it'll just a matter of building and upgrading, adding heroes as you can
and giving them things to buy. When you're ready to attack the fortress, use
the gate spell to get your heroes to the location quickly, but wait a few
seconds first so the wave of creatures created by the fortress will be out of
the way. Also put flags on the fortress and its defenders to attract more
heroes. Then keep an eye on your heroes and heal them liberally so they won't
flee. If you're lucky, the fortress will stick around long enough for you to
destroy. Otherwise you'll have to keep trying.
6.3. Rise of the Ratmen
-----------------------
Objectives:
1. Kill Rhoden, the ratman king.
2. Destroy all broken sewer mains.
My Best Time:
25 days
Walkthrough:
You'll always start with at least two sewer entrances next to your palace, so
don't bother restarting the quest hoping for a better situation. You'll also
start out with buildings all over the place on the map. So the first thing you
should do is take everything that isn't especially close to your palace off the
repair and tax routes. Then start training rangers and upgrading your
marketplace while building a rogue guild.
You'll be under constant attack from rats during the quest. The numerous sewer
entrances will see to that, and groups of rat shamans, rat champions, and
ratapults will also appear from time to time. Try your best to keep expanding
your base. Add a warrior guild and temple to dauros as quickly as possible,
and upgrade your marketplace to level three so you'll get the full benefit from
the caravans that will come in.
Speaking of caravans, try to keep at least one of the trading posts around
(especially the one next to the level two blacksmith). Pick the one that you
want to defend and put your warrior guild next to it. You might also want to
put a guardhouse or two nearby for extra protection. The trading post is
important. With it and elves, you won't need to build another marketplace.
Let your rangers explore the map while your paladins and monks stay near your
base. You might also want to use guardhouses for extra defense. If you do use
them, put them down in pairs (at least). Solitary guardhouses will get swarmed
and destroyed by the rats, but pairs (or triplets) will sometimes have a
chance. However, you can probably get away with not having guardhouses if you
put buildings with lots of hit points on the perimeter, and let those buildings
plus houses distract the rats while your paladins and monks kill them off.
When you've destroyed all of the sewer mains, Rhoden won't necessarily appear.
I'm not sure if he'll wait a few days first or if it's just predefined that
he'll appear on Day 25. I cleared the map by Day 20 and then had several days
to accumulate gold before he showed up. So when Rhoden finally did make his
appearance on Day 25 it was simplicity itself to wipe him and his entourage out
with wizard spells.
If you don't have the luxury of wizard spells, then the final battle will be a
little more exciting. Rhoden will appear with about three groups of rats, and
they'll all attack from different directions. So let your paladins and monks
do their job as best they can, and remember that it doesn't matter if the rats
destroy a large portion of your base. You just have to kill Rhoden and the
sewer mains that appear when he does, and you'll win the quest.
6.4. Trade Routes
-----------------
Objective:
1. Protect at least half of the caravans over a 31-day period.
My Best Time:
31 days
Walkthrough:
You'll start out with two warriors and a ranger, so quickly train a thief so
you can upgrade your palace to level two. Also quickly start upgrading and
researching at your marketplace. It's the only one you'll get for this quest,
and numerous caravans will be visiting it, so it'll pay off to get it to level
three right away.
With the rest of your money, build a ranger guild and then train rangers and
thieves. After about two days, you'll be attacked by several goblins and enemy
thieves. Low level warriors will tend to run away, but rangers and thieves
will stay and fight, and they'll usually be able to drive off the attack
without anything major being destroyed. Once the attack is over, place a
warrior guild near your marketplace, and put down a couple of guardhouses for
defense. Most of the attacks on your base will be from wimpy creatures like
thieves and goblins, and guardhouses will actually be useful in that case.
Over the 31 days of the quest, you'll periodically see a caravan approach your
base. There isn't much you can do early in the quest, but after a few days you
should try to explore the map and clear the four trade routes. Don't worry
about lone creature lairs, but definitely flag things like goblin towers and
daemonwood trees if they're near a route. Also try to get a temple to agrela
up quickly. You can heal caravans just like any other unit, and since enemy
creatures won't focus on the caravans, you can usually pamper them with heals
to make sure they get to your base.
Every few days, some random bad event will occur. These can be things like
several barbarians attacking your base or a ``magical accident'' at your palace
(which will throw fireballs at your heroes and henchmen) or the appearance of
more daemonwood or poisonous flowers on the map. Just keep the routes clear
and don't worry about the rest. You'll only need to get 15 of the 30 caravans
to your marketplace to win.
6.5. Urban Renewal
------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy all Red guilds, lounges, and gambling halls.
My Best Time:
21 days
Walkthrough:
This is a difficult mission to start out. If you don't flag any of the Red
buildings, Red will essentially be your ally and leave you alone. But the Red
units will also use your shops to grow stronger, and the Red rogues might steal
from your buildings. If you do flag one or more Red buildings, then Red will
attack you after two days, and it'll send several rogues and elves your way.
If they can get to your tax collectors, then the quest will be over. You won't
be able to make any gold and Red will keep chipping away until you lose.
So what you need to do is build some guardhouses. If there isn't enough room
between your palace and the Red buildings, then restart the quest until there
is room. Then add a second marketplace, and protect both marketplaces as well
as the paths your tax collectors are likely to take with four or five
guardhouses. Elves and rogues will run away from guardhouses upgraded with
arrows, and so the guardhouses will give you some breathing space.
Once the guardhouses are up, build a blacksmith, warrior guild, and temple to
dauros. Barbarians won't work well in this quest because they won't buy
potions, and ranged attackers (with poisoned weapons) will just pick them
apart. Priestesses might be a good choice because skeletons are good at
dodging, but I didn't try them. Paladins can mow down rogues and elves pretty
easily, and that's what I used.
Once you upgrade your blacksmith to level three, also add in dwarves. Put
their settlement at the most vulnerable point in your base, and then train
three dwarves to help out the paladins. Also build a temple to agrela at some
point so you can heal, but don't worry about upgrading it. It takes quite a
few rogues and elves to seriously damage a paladin. As long as you keep half
an eye on them you should never need to resurrect them, and so a level one
temple to agrela should be enough.
Once you have four paladins and once your base is secure, the quest will be
just about finished. All you'll have to do is track down the Red buildings and
destroy them, fighting lots of rogues and elves along the way. Red will have a
couple dozen buildings, so it'll take a while. You might want to build a
ranger guild and train some rangers so they'll help you uncover the map. Also
note that Red will have a couple of warriors and barbarians hidden in some
buildings, but once they're ousted they'll head straight for your base where
your defenses or paladins should be able to kill them easily.
*******************************
* 7. MAJESTY NE EXPERT QUESTS *
*******************************
7.1. Darkness Falls
-------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy the wights Styx and Stones.
My Best Time:
16 days
Walkthrough:
This isn't really an expert quest. It's barely even an advanced quest. All
you have to do is kill Styx and Stones within about a day of each other, and
you'll win. That might be difficult if it was difficult to get to Styx and
Stones, or if Styx and Stones were difficult to kill, but it's not and they're
not. So if you've been struggling with the other expert quests, here's one you
can finish in less than an hour.
You'll start out with a warrior guild, but don't train any warriors yet. You
won't come under attack for a while, so you can work on your economy first. So
build a marketplace and then a ranger guild. Then while you're training four
rangers, add a second marketplace and finally upgrade your palace to level two.
Now you can add a temple to dauros and begin training paladins. During this
time a vampire might wander into your base, but a single paladin should be able
to kill it, and it'll be even easier if a ranger or guardhouse helps out.
Continue to expand your base. Add an inn and an elven bungalow to increase
your money flow. Then, as your gold allows, add a temple to agrela, add and
upgrade a blacksmith, and upgrade one of your marketplaces far enough to get
rings of protection. Then add a second warrior guild and train more paladins.
If you're running short on gold, realize that you don't need to train monks or
healers, since they won't help very much.
On the map you'll find several ancient graveyards, which will spawn some undead
creatures every so often. Feel free to ignore them. The worst thing they'll
produce is a vampire, and those should be easy for your paladins to kill. What
you'll have to watch for are two archaic tombs. Each tomb will house a wight,
and once your destroy the tomb, the wight will start wandering the map.
Now the wights aren't very difficult to kill. They'll each have 250 hit
points, but their defensive and resistance ratings won't be overly high, so a
single paladin should be able to kill a wight given enough time. That means
you don't really have to worry about coordinating attacks against the two
archaic tombs and the two wights. If you have to kill one of the wights a
couple of times, it's no big problem.
So let your paladins kill some undead for a while to boost their levels, and
then target one of the archaic tombs. Once the tomb is gone, put a hefty
bounty (1000 gold should be enough) on the wight, and let your paladins get to
work. You might also want to build a wizard guild since wizards are pretty
good about going after bounties, and they'll be able to deal out a lot of
damage while hiding behind your paladins.
Then repeat with the second tomb, and go back and kill the first wight again if
you need to. The only other thing you might have to worry about are herds of
shadow beasts that will appear on the map every so often. But they'll only
have 50 hit points each and just about any of your heroes should be able to
kill them. Also, goblin towers will appear on the map every so often, but
they'll be on your side making it even easier to defend against the shadow
beasts.
7.2. Legendary Heroes
---------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy all of the ancient barrows within 30 days (with maybe a day or two
extra).
My Best Time:
30 days
Walkthrough:
Conceptually, this is not a very difficult quest. There are six ancient
barrows scattered around the map, and you'll just have to find them and destroy
them. What makes the quest difficult is that there are lots of high level
enemy creatures -- like rock golems, dragons, and medusae -- roaming around,
and while your high level melee heroes can handle them pretty easily, your
explorers can't. And so your main difficulty will be in exploring the map.
Since you can only house one hero per guild in this quest, your main concern
other than exploration will be in earning gold. Heroes will be really
expensive, especially when you have to build second and third copies of guilds
to bulk up your army. One way to ease the pain financially, at least a little,
is to use an embassy and an outpost. These buildings will still house two and
six heroes respectively, and so they'll allow you to gain eight more heroes for
``only'' about 15,000 gold. Once you've dropped down one (or perhaps two) of
each guild, go with the embassy and outpost and hope you get something useful.
You can also take the opportunity to add a trading post with the outpost to
generate even more gold.
To start out, train a thief and a solarii, build a second marketplace, and then
upgrade your palace to level two. Put some 100-200 coin explore flags a small
distance away from your base and hope the rogue bites on them. Then add a
ranger guild for the added exploration, put an inn somewhere next to your
palace, and finally add a third marketplace. When the elves offer to join your
kingdom, let them.
At this point you'll have to make a decision about which temples you want to
use for the quest. You can't use barbarians because of the temple to helia,
but you'll still have to choose between paladins and priestesses. I chose
priestesses because they and their skeletons are useful explorers. However,
paladins are a good choice too because they can kill any of the high level
creatures you'll find on the map. Regardless, you should also go with a wizard
guild right away. There's nothing like starting a quest with a high level
wizard.
So now we get to the hard part, which is exploring the map. You can put out
explore flags and hope your rogues and elves will go for them, but usually
they'll run into enough enemy creatures that they won't get very far. You can
also put attack flags on any creatures that you find hovering around unexplored
territory, and sometimes that will work, and sometimes it won't. You can also
try to expand your wizard spell coverage and use the farseeing spell. Your
best bet, though, is to do all three of those things -- and also get your
sorcerer's abode to level three and use the gate spell. You can't set the gate
to a region on the map you haven't explored yet, but you can often put it
somewhere so your explorers can ``leapfrog'' most of the enemy creatures and
find their way to your explore flags.
Each time you destroy a barrow, lots of (mostly bad) things will happen. For
starters, an earthquake will rock your entire base, damaging all of your
buildings and giving your peasants way too much to do (which is another reason
to add an outpost). Secondly, a large wave of enemy creatures will suddenly
appear on the map. Sometimes they'll appear far away from your base giving you
time to prepare, and sometimes they'll appear right in the heart of your base.
Thus, it's a good idea to have your wizard guild at level three before you get
to, say, the third barrow. You probably won't need lightning storm for the
first two barrows because the first one will feature only trolls, which you
should be able to kill easily, and the second will feature medusae, which I've
never had appear inside my base. But the third one will have minotaurs, and
after that you'll get minotaurs, trolls, medusae, and dragons in combination,
and it's definitely a good idea to have spells on your side.
You won't lose the quest if you take over 30 days to destroy the barrows.
After 30 days a permanent earthquake will start up, and it will destroy your
entire base given enough time. However, you won't actually lose until your
palace is destroyed. So if your peasants keep repairing your palace, you might
be able to survive an extra day or two and finish off a last barrow.
But even if you do everything right, you still might not win this quest. A lot
depends on the placement of the barrows. If they end up on the opposite side
of the map, or if your heroes just don't find them, then you're not going to
win. It took me five or six tries to finally get past this quest, and even
then I didn't win until after time had expired. So just keep plugging away.
7.3. The Siege
--------------
Objectives:
1. Destroy Borjin's fortress, or
2. Destroy the caravans supplying Borjin with gold.
My Best Time:
36 days
Walkthrough:
There are two possible objectives, but it doesn't matter. Even if you decide
to attack Borjin's kingdom, you should still try to cut down as many of his
caravans as possible. Otherwise he'll have all sorts of gold, and he'll be
able to continually heal and re-animate his heroes -- not to mention cast
wizard spells like lightning storm if you get close enough to his palace. So
concentrate on the caravans first, and then think about attacking Borjin's
kingdom if things seem to be going well.
As in Trade Routes, there will be four spots where the caravans will appear.
Luckily, they'll all be on ``your'' side of the map, so all you'll need to do
is guard those four areas to destroy the caravans. Since it's not likely your
heroes will be able to cover enough of the map to kill the caravans, you'll
have to rely on defensive towers. And so you'll have to use dwarves. To that
end, upgrade your blacksmith as quickly as possible so you can get the dwarves
in your kingdom. When they join, immediately put their settlement next to the
middle of the three guardhouses between your kingdom and Borjin's. That'll be
a hot spot for the remainder of the quest.
When you start out, first realize that the quest is going to take a while, so
plan ahead by building three marketplaces, plus some inns to protect the edges
of your palace. Later you should add trading posts to some of the remote areas
you'll have to guard because of the enemy caravans, so only upgrade the
marketplaces likely to receive your own caravans. Then upgrade all of your
guardhouses to shoot arrows, but don't upgrade them to level two unless you
really want to.
Early in the mission you should try to chase down caravans with your heroes,
and let the enemy heroes batter themselves against your defensive structures.
So add a rogue guild and train some rogues and rangers. Also, upgrade the
rogue guild to level two. Borjin will heal his caravans sometimes if they get
into trouble, and so every extra bit of damage will help. Later in the quest
you can add a sorcerer's abode so your rangers and rogues will also be able to
use fire balm.
Every time you see a caravan, note its position, and eventually you'll discover
the four starting points. There will also be ``siege markers'' near the
starting points, but the markers will be tough to spot and it'll be easier just
to wait for the caravans to start arriving. If you're lucky, the starting
points will either be close together, making them easier to defend, or they'll
be in the corners of the map farthest from Borjin's kingdom, giving the
caravans the longest distance to travel and forcing them to head straight
through the middle of the map to get to Borjin's marketplace. Regardless, once
you know the starting points of the caravans, try to put some ballista towers
in the area. Five towers will always kill a caravan. In the meantime, use
attack flags to get your rogues and rangers to kill the caravans. If you get
enough together, they'll sometimes do the job, but if the caravan looks like
it's going to get away, then take the attack flag off so your heroes don't go
wandering into the enemy kingdom (where they'll probably get swarmed and
killed).
Once you get a ways into the quest and upgrade your palace to level three,
you'll have to make a decision about which temple to use, helia or lunord.
Lunord will give you the ``winged feet'' spell, and that'll be useful for
chasing down caravans. But if you're going to rely on defensive structures to
kill the caravans, then a better choice is helia. Since you won't be able to
use wizard guilds in the quest, your only other offensive spells will be chain
lightning and frost field. Those are good spells, but they're slow and not
guaranteed to kill anything, and sometimes you'll need to kill an enemy
priestess or wizard quickly. And so you'll find the two helia fire spells to
be very useful.
Once you've guarded a couple of the caravan starting points, you can go ahead
and start thinking about attacking Borjin's base. If you train some dwarves
and paladins, then your those heroes might even make the decision for you.
Once you do start to mix it up with Borjin, make sure you upgrade your temple
to agrela to level three, and then start pushing out heroes. Try to watch over
them and protect them as much as possible, and resurrect them when you can't.
Eventually you'll start killing off some of enemy heroes and destroying some of
the buildings, and once you get to that point it'll just be a matter of time
before you win. If you just want to kill caravans, then just keep building
ballista towers until you have five at every starting point, and eventually
Borjin will run out of money.
7.4. The Valley of the Serpents
-------------------------------
Objectives:
1. Destroy the snake pits.
2. Keep at least one elven bungalow from being destroyed.
My Best Time:
19 days
Walkthrough:
This is a difficult quest to start, but a relatively easy one to finish. Your
base will be at one side of the map, and a lone elven bungalow will be at the
other. You'll have to protect the bungalow, but you'll only need to do so for
about five days. After that the elves will build a couple more bungalows right
next to your base.
About two days into the quest, some elves will join your kingdom and head
straight for an inn to hide. About a day after that, more elves will arrive,
but this time they'll be followed by about ten medusae. The medusae will chase
the elves until they kill them, and then they'll head straight for the
bungalow.
So your first job will be to protect the bungalow from that initial attack.
The obvious ways to do this don't seem to work very well. If you try to build
a warrior guild and some guardhouses near the bungalow, it'll take too long
(even if you cast winged feet on your peasants) and you'll have two bases,
which is always annoying. And some medusae might just wander over and kill
your peasants while they're building. If you try to place a wizard guild and
some wizard towers near the bungalow, the towers will only distract a couple of
the medusae while the others destroy the bungalow. And if you upgrade your
wizard guild all the way to level three so you can cast lightning storm, it'll
be expensive and might not even work since medusae have such a high resistance.
So the way to protect the bungalow -- and this is going to sound odd -- is to
do nothing at all. The medusae will head straight for the bungalow, but
they're bloodthirsty little devils, and if you can get some heroes between them
and their target destination, they'll stop and fight. So how do you get your
heroes to the right spot at the right time? There are two ways. The expensive
way is to use the gate spell. Since you'll start with a level three sorcerer's
abode, this is fairly easy to do. Just wait for the medusae to arrive and then
set a target between them and the bungalow. The cheaper way is to set an
attack flag on one of the snake pits on the map. The medusae will come from
the exact same spot as the first elf group, so if you target a snake pit
between that position and the bungalow, your heroes will be in the way without
even realizing it. Then you'll just need to remove the flag on the pit and set
a couple of flags on the medusae and watch your paladins get to work.
Since you'll have about three days before the initial attack, you can start out
by setting up your economy. To that end, first upgrade your palace to level
two and then build two marketplaces near your palace. Because you'll have
elves already, the marketplaces will generate a good amount of money, and you
won't have to build any more. Then build two warrior guilds and a temple to
dauros and start cranking out paladins. You should be able to train between
six and eight paladins before the medusae attack.
Once you withstand the initial attack, build a rogue guild and a ranger guild,
and upgrade the rogue guild to level two. You'll have to set a lot of attack
flags on a lot of snake pits before you're done, and your rogues and elves will
do a surprisingly good job of destroying the pits for you. Then, as your gold
allows, upgrade one of your marketplaces to level three, build and upgrade a
blacksmith, and build and upgrade a wizard guild. Your heroes will come into a
lot of money before the quest is over, so it's a good idea to give them things
to buy.
Once the elves place a couple bungalows near your base, forget about the
initial bungalow and pick one of the new ones to protect. Your most dangerous
enemy from this point on won't be the medusae, but instead will be the ice
dragons that will show up every so often. They'll have a high defense rating
but a poor resistance, so you can use wizard towers to defend the bungalow.
Also, try to keep some gold around so you can cast lightning storm. The
dragons will stay conveniently bunched up, making the spell effective.
Then it's just a matter of destroying the snake pits. Simply flag a couple of
pits, let your rogues, elves and paladins go to work, and then repeat as
necessary. You should be able to destroy the pits faster than they spawn.
Meanwhile, keep expanding your base and adding more heroes so you can finish
the quest more quickly. Eventually you'll receive groups of gnomes and dwarves
to help out, and it should be smooth sailing from that point on.
*******************************
* 8. MAJESTY NE MASTER QUESTS *
*******************************
8.1. Spires of Death
--------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy the five spires.
My Best Time:
62 days
Walkthrough:
You won't have much time to get settled in with this quest, but even so you
shouldn't make the mistake of using gnomes or training warriors at your warrior
guild. Instead, immediately build a rogue guild next to your base and start
training rogues. Since you can't do anything else useful at the moment, go
ahead a build a marketplace, and, when you have four rogues, upgrade your
palace to level two. Now you can build a temple to dauros and start training
paladins.
After about two days you'll be attacked by a mess of goblins. They'll come
from the five spires, and so they might arrive from five different directions.
Try to survive the attack as well as possible. You'll have a couple of guards,
four rogues, and perhaps a paladin or two. They'll be able to kill the
goblins, but you might lose a building. However, now you'll know the exact
directions every attack in the quest will come from, and so you'll be able to
set up your defenses accordingly. If the goblin attacks come from all four
sides, you might want to start over until you get a map where the goblins only
attack from a couple sides, since that situation will be easier to defend.
These attacks from the spires will come every couple of days, and they'll get
progressively more difficult as your army grows in power. So don't grow your
army. Instead, stay with four paladins and four rogues for a while, and
instead improve your economy and upgrade your buildings. Try to get to a level
three blacksmith quickly so you can add a dwarven settlement and some ballista
towers.
Once you're reasonably confident about your defenses, and once you have a level
three palace and a level three wizard guild, go ahead and start expanding your
army. Train wizards and monks and build another warrior guild so you can add
four more paladins. Then let this group gain experience for a while. You can
add a fairgrounds to help them out, or you can just let them kill the waves of
goblins, rust spiders, and eventually werewolves and vampires.
Once you get your paladins to double digit levels, you should be about ready to
tackle the spires. Build a ranger guild and train some rangers so they'll
explore the map and find the spires. (You don't want to explore the map any
earlier or else your paladins will keep trying to destroy the spires before
you're ready.) Build a temple to agrela if you haven't already, and then add a
mess of ballista towers. A dozen ballista towers is a good idea, and more
might be better.
Why do you need so many ballista towers? Because every time you destroy a
spire, all of the remaining spires (plus the recently destroyed one) will
unleash a whole bunch of spelled-up goblins, and they'll all make a beeline for
your base. Since all of your good fighters will be at the destroyed spire,
you'll need your base to be able to defend itself. You'll also need to hurry.
After a spire is destroyed, it will reappear on the map after four days, and so
you'll have to act quickly to get rid of all the spires -- plus kill all of the
goblins -- before the spires start resurrecting themselves.
The wrong way to destroy the spires is to flag one, fight your way through the
goblins, flag the next, and so on. That will take too long. A better method
is to flag a couple of the spires and hope your heroes split up evenly and
destroy the spires at about the same time. You'll have more goblins attacking
your base, but you'll also have less work to do in the next four days. Then,
after you clear the goblins, you can repeat the process with two more spires,
and then finally destroy the last one.
If your attack force keeps getting bogged down by goblins, you can use call-to-
arms to bring your paladins back to your base and then use gate to send them to
the next spire. That's effective, but the gate spell will cause your sorcerer
to rest for a long time, and so you won't be able to rely on gate alone. If
you have a lot of gold, you can also extend your wizard coverage and cast
lightning storm on the goblins blocking your attack force to clear them out of
the way more quickly. You can also build ballista towers around each of the
spires to help out. Remember, there isn't any sort of time limit here, so you
can prepare as much as you want before attacking the spires.
8.2. Vigil for a Fallen Hero
----------------------------
Objective:
1. Destroy the abomination.
My Best Time:
34 days
Walkthrough:
Take a close look at the restrictions for this quest. You won't be able to
train any heroes, and you won't be able to cast any spells. That means you'll
have to be extra careful with the heroes you start with, and the only way
you'll be able to watch over them is with bounty flags. If you see a hero
fighting all by itself, set attack flags on nearby creatures so more heroes
will come in to help out. This is especially important with the gorgons on the
map, since they'll turn heroes to stone and leave them vulnerable.
There aren't many buildings you can place in this quest, so start out by adding
things your heroes will find useful -- a marketplace so they'll have healing
potions and rings of protection, a blacksmith so they'll be able to improve
their equipment, and an inn or a hall of champions so they'll have a place to
rest. Then get your heroes exploring. Your ranger will probably hook up with
your barbarian, so you'll have to set explore flags.
There are three sets of buildings you can find on the map: a pair of trading
posts, an outpost, and an inn; a sorcerer's abode and a magic bazaar; and an
outpost, a house, and a library. The most important of the trio is the abode
and bazaar, so when you find them immediately start putting down guardhouses to
protect them. At different times during the quest, large groups of minotaurs
and shadow beasts will appear on the map, and it's important to kill them
before they can destroy any buildings that you can't replace. If you have to,
set attack flags with outrageous awards on them to get your heroes involved.
Then it'll just be a matter of exploring the map until you find the
abomination. You'll recognize it when you see it because it'll be big and red.
Put as big a reward as you can on it and hope your heroes bite. I had to go up
to 35,000 gold before my heroes showed much interest. And even with a large
reward you'll probably have to use the change of heart spell a few times to
keep your heroes around. The abomination has a nasty fire attack, but
otherwise it isn't particularly powerful, so if you can get two or three heroes
to attack it at once, you should be able to kill it easily.
The only other things of note on the map are three yeti and a half dozen
ancient graveyards. The yeti are nasty, but your heroes probably won't run
from them. So put big reward flags on any yeti you find to try and attract as
many heroes as possible. Otherwise wandering heroes will try to solo them and
probably get killed in the process. The ancient graveyards are pretty much
non-factors in the quest. You can either have your heroes destroy them or not
and it won't make any difference.
**************************
* 9. DOWNLOADABLE QUESTS *
**************************
9.1. The Wrath of Krolm
-----------------------
Objectives:
1. Destroy all altars to krolm, or
2. Kill the avatar of krolm
My Best Time:
68 days
Walkthrough:
This is a quest where starting out can be difficult. You'll only have two days
before werewolves, barbarians, and more start paying you regular visits. Plus,
you won't start out with a lot of gold, and you'll never make a lot of gold, so
you'll have to plan carefully.
So here's what to do: build a guardhouse, train four thieves, upgrade your
palace, and then build another guardhouse. You should put the guardhouses near
your marketplace or sewer entrances or both, and you should also place them so
they extend your view towards the center of the map. The reason why
guardhouses are useful here is because you won't have time to build a warrior
guild and train a warrior and have that warrior buy potions before the enemy
units arrive. You could build a ranger guild in time, but rangers won't be all
that helpful against the creatures you'll be facing. And so the guardhouses
will help you get through the initial battles, and they'll be useful for your
interior defenses as well.
Then build a warrior guild at the outer edge of your base so that it is nearest
to the center of the map. The idea here is that the warrior guild will end up
being the focus of most enemy attacks, and with its 800 hit points plus the
call-to-arms option, it should always survive. Around the rest of the
perimeter place a temple to dauros, a temple to agrela, and a wizard guild.
You should build the temple to dauros first so you can start training paladins,
and the wizard guild should go next to the warrior guild so it can give you
good spell coverage over your base. Eventually you'll want to bring the wizard
guild to level three so you can cast lightning storm.
In the interior of your base you should put a library and a blacksmith. When
those and your perimeter buildings are in place, then you should build an elven
bungalow. Money will be your primary need in this quest, and the elves will
help with that. By building the bungalow last, you'll force the elven lounge
and gambling hall to sprout up outside your perimeter and act as a buffer when
attacks come.
While you are building up your base, you should try to do some exploring.
There are six altars to krolm on the map, plus a host of creature lairs. Each
time you destroy a creature lair, creatures (usually evil occuli) will appear.
Each time you destroy an altar to krolm, an avatar of krolm will appear. He'll
be huge (4000 hit points the first time you see him but fewer after that),
he'll summon a bunch of fairly wimpy creatures (such as harpies and wolves)
every few minutes, and he'll invoke rage-of-krolm. Luckily, he'll leave after
he suffers enough damage, so get your paladins after him and watch the combat
so you can heal as needed. Also, each time he summons creatures, they'll start
out in a bunch, and that's when you should hit them with a lightning storm
spell. Since the creatures won't have many hit points, one storm should either
kill them outright or severely wound them making them easier kills for your
other units.
Once you destroy all six altars to krolm, the mission will end. If you're
organized, the trick to the mission is to destroy multiple altars at once.
Then you can skip some appearances by the avatar and save some time and grief.
However, this strategy is difficult (or perhaps impossible) with paladins since
they'll go out and attack lairs on their own, and you'll only have so much
money to call them back with call-to-arms.
9.2. Balance of Twilight
------------------------
Objectives:
1. Find and restore the ancient sage
2. Resanctify the Shrine of Light
3. Destroy the black phantoms
My Best Time:
46+ days
Walkthrough:
It will take three days before creatures will start attacking you, but once
they do come, they'll be fairly nasty -- with black phantoms as the main menace
but also werewolves and trolls to make your life difficult as well. Because of
the black phantoms, you won't really have a choice for this quest; you'll have
to use dwarves, and you'll have to get to them as quickly as possible.
So, to start out, build a ranger guild. Then, while you're training four
rangers, build a second marketplace and an inn, and research and upgrade the
blacksmith. Once you have four rangers, upgrade the palace to level two, and
then research and upgrade the blacksmith again to make it level three. Dwarves
should become available, and so you should add their settlement as quickly as
possible. Place it on the perimeter of your kingdom, somewhere near the
middle.
After three days, all of the lairs on the map -- and there are several -- will
start producing creatures, so you'll have about three and a half days before
they'll arrive. Your dwarven settlement should already be in place, but it
probably won't be enough by itself, so add a ballista or two if you have time.
Then, when the creatures start arriving, try to get your rangers to attack the
goblins while your dwarven settlement and ballista towers take out the trolls
and werewolves.
After four days, the Shrine of Evil will show up on the map. Mark its location
well because from now on three black phantoms will continually attack your
base. Killing them will only send them back to the shrine to repeat the
process. The phantoms will travel in a straight line when they move from the
shrine to your base, so figure out where they'll attack and put some ballista
towers there. If your dwarven settlement is close enough to help out, then
you'll only need two or three ballista towers (plus the settlement) to defend
against the phantoms.
Now that you know where the black phantom attacks will come from, start
expanding your base (avoiding the phantom area). The dauros / agrella temple
duo is probably the best choice here because you'll need to be proactive during
the remainder of the quest, both in exploring the map and destroying lairs. Be
sure to keep your ranger guild full, and also build a rogue guild so you'll
have rogues to go after flags.
The ancient sage will be in a mausoleum on the opposite corner of the map.
He'll actually be a level 50 wizard, and it'll cost you 50,000 gold to
resurrect him. So while you're building up your base and creating heroes, also
build a third marketplace, and then, once you've cleared away enough lairs, add
an outpost / ballista tower / trading post group to generate even more gold.
Once you find the mausoleum and resurrect the wizard, he'll walk to the Shrine
of Light. You won't be able to cast winged feet on him, so you'll just have to
wait for him to trudge his way across the map. Once the wizard enters the
shrine... I don't know what happens. The game always crashes at this point for
me. But the remainder of the quest should be pretty easy because all you'll
have to do is kill the phantoms, and you'll have been doing that for the entire
quest.
*******************
* 10. CHEAT CODES *
*******************
To use a cheat code, press , type the phrase on the left, and then press
again. You'll receive the result on the right.
Cheezy towers: wizard spells can be cast anywhere
Fill this bag: receive 10,000 gold
Give me power: all spells become available
Grow up: selected hero receives five levels
Planet fargo: hear a funny song (Majesty NE only)
Victory is mine: win the quest
*******************
* 11. EASTER EGGS *
*******************
Select a unit or building and press the "-key. You'll usually hear something
funny.
***********************
* 12. VERSION HISTORY *
***********************
Version 1.7
-----------
Submitted:
June 14, 2001
Notes:
Added a walkthrough (of sorts) for the downloadable quest ``Balance of
Twilight'' (9.2).
Version 1.6
-----------
Submitted:
April 21, 2001
Notes:
Discovered belatedly that you can destroy some of your own buildings (thanks,
Goldy) so I updated two walkthroughs: ``The Dark Forest'' (5.2) and ``A Clash
of Empires'' (6.1). Also improved the walkthrough for ``The Siege'' (7.3).
Version 1.5
-----------
Submitted:
April 12, 2001
Notes:
Expanded the introduction. Improved the walkthrough for ``The Fortress of
Ixmil.''
Version 1.4
-----------
Submitted:
April 11, 2001
Notes:
Added the two master Majesty NE quest walkthroughs. Added cheat codes and an
easter egg.
Version 1.3
-----------
Submitted:
April 10, 2001
Notes:
Added the remaining two advanced Majesty NE quest walkthroughs. Added the four
expert Majesty NE quest walkthroughs. Added a table of contents.
Version 1.2
-----------
Submitted:
April 7, 2001
Notes:
Added a technical note regarding Majesty NE. Updated the money gameplay tip to
include trading posts. Set up the document to support Majesty NE. Added three
advanced Majesty NE quest walkthroughs.
Version 1.1
-----------
Submitted:
February 17, 2001
Notes:
Fixed some doc-to-txt tabbing ugliness.
Version 1.0
-----------
Submitted:
February 16, 2001
Notes:
Initial version. Added walkthroughs for the advanced and expert quests
included with Majesty FKS as well as a walkthrough for the downloadable quest
``The Wrath of Krolm.''
*******************************
* 13. PERMISSIONS AND UPDATES *
*******************************
This guide may be posted on any web site as long as the text is not changed and
as long as I am informed of the posting. I will always submit new versions to
GameFAQs (www.gamefaqs.com) first, so if you are looking for the most up-to-
date version of this guide, that is the place to look.
*****
Copyright © 2001 by Steven W. Carter