HTTT Cliffs of Thoria

[Ledtim]

Not to be confused with Cliffs of Thoria in Legend of Wesnoth.

Has anybody beaten this scenario in 1.4.5? Or if there has been no change in the 1.5 series, in those versions too? I didn't see a walkthrough for this scenario in the wiki and didn't see anybody saying they beat it in the feedback thread.

I'm guessing the branch this scenario is in hasn't been polished thoroughly since the difficulty goes through the roof in Cliffs and then there's virtually no dialogue in the mission after it.

So, I tried using normal leveled troops I have and they got slaughtered in the water and couldn't make it fast enough to destroy the drake tents before they spawned more drakes.

I started the scenario with around 1600 gold, and tried recruiting mass mermen and some gryphons to destroy tents, but the constantly spawning drakes wore them down.

[palloco]

Can you post a savegame to try it?

[Ledtim]

Sure, here's the save.

[palloco]

You should recruit like 60% mermen (dont bother with initiates, they are useless, except for the priestess that you can recall as it can heal your units) and 40% gryphons, and recall the sylph and the shide, that will be crucial in the assaults.
By turn 4/5 you should have destroyed the first 2 outposts, and then you have to proceed carefully, although not slowly.
Try to attract drakes attention to attack you in the water by using units that will survive (make sure that they can only be attacked through 2 or maximum 3 hexagons); keep the netcaster and triton as healthy (use the mermaid) as possible as they should be the main defenders. Dont use gryphons for defence, they should only be used in the mountain attacks and in safe water attacks.

Spending 600 gold and being careless I killed enemy leader in a rush, but my situation was hopeless. If you spend 1200 using the terrain for your advantage, you can do it.

[Ledtim]

Well, I managed this far. I recruited until I spent all of 1600 gold in mermen hunter/fighters and gryphon riders. Basically, I'm near the leader and will probably take him out in a couple of rounds. However, I peeked with debug mode to see how many units drakes have left and they have 76 to my 60-something. And they are getting about 8 new units per round. And many of those units are lvl 2 units. Considering that taking out the leader won't stop the spawning of the drakes, i think this is hopeless, though if you want, you can try.
I'm kind of burnt out on controlling 60+ units per round. The spawning rate of drakes in this level is insane.

[csarmi]

Your map is won. Just finish this wave and remove the dwellings. Your next attack (this turn) cripples the drakes completely.

[Ender27182818]

So, I just tried to play this map in Wesnoth 1.6.5. I only started with 736 gold, which I thought was pretty good. I've found that the map is essentially impossible with that amount of gold and the number of spawned drakes. I tried downloading the savegame that was posted here earlier, but the latest version causes it to behave strangely. Namely, as soon as I kill a drake I lose.

Anyways, it seems to me that if killing the drake leader ended the scenario in victory, or at least stopped the spawning, or if the spawning was capped some how, this would be possible. Otherwise it just isn't. I'll try it once more, moving even faster, but I think it's unlikely I'll have more success

[Ender27182818]

Latest strategy I tried:
Turn 1: recruit all gryphons
Turn 2: another set of gryphons, take the first drake base
Turn 3: Set of mermen, take the second drake base
Turn 4: Set of mermen, take the third drake base
Turn 5: Out of money, gryphons starting to get raped by the hordes of drakes
Turn 6: Get the fourth drake base, gryphons are essentially all dead.
Turn 7: I was wrong, 2 gryphons survived, used mermen to make a screen for them until the horrors of daytime are over. Drakes are now getting 5 troops per turn.
Turn 10: Mermen assault the armaggedon drake. It's night time, so good time to do it
Turn 11: Nearly impossible to break through the level 2 guards around the big goss.
Turn 12: Daytime. Asses are liberally handed out. By drakes. To me.
Turn 14: Down to 5 troops, still manage to kill their leader. Little dialog indicates that I'm screwed. Everyone is going to die.
Turn 16: 4 Brave level 3 units go down in the night to the horde.
Turn 17: I lied, one dude survived on a town for a little while. Emphasis on little.
Turn 18: Good thing all my heroes stayed home. It is now halfway through the scenario, and I have no gold, and no units. Yay.
Turn 35: Yep, they are still making more drakes. Yep, they still want to kill me.
Turn 45: Blessed, blessed oblivion.

[Sapient]

Cliffs of Thoria was intended to be very, very difficult. That's why it is an optional path. If it is too difficult, you can go back to an earlier save and choose a different path. Not sure if that's the answer you wanted, but I just wanted to make sure you were aware of it.

[HomerJ]

I recall playing through HttT one time with the sole purpose of leveling Merfolk to be able to beat the cliffs. I did it, however I don't remember the difficulty or wesnoth version any more (I think I was running 1.4 and 1.6 at that time...).

Greetz
HomerJ

[nukchebi0]

did they make it substantially easier in 1.8.3? i tried it jokingly in medium by building two full keeps of gryphons and rushing, and encountered no difficulties at all. i killed the leader in the second or third turn. i'll post the replay so you can analyze it.

[monochromatic]

Read what's on the fourth line in the actual changelog.

[nukchebi0]

oh, okay. that kind of makes the getting through 18th and 19th scenarios a complete joke, though. its four turns to rush a merman to the eastern edge of the map in 18 and no more than 25 straightforward turns in cliffs of thoria

[Sapient]

Yeah, that's unfortunate because it's supposed to be the most challenging option of the three.
I'm sure it will be balanced better in future releases, so thanks for that feedback.

[zookeeper]

Yeah, I'll make it harder again. Since based on the feedback it was clearly way too difficult and I have little interest in that branch of the campaign, I just made a big change in the opposite direction while I was rewriting the WML which was horribly ineffective.

I'm not sure how the drake leader is even supposed to act, though. I guess I'll try to make it more cautious and wait around in the easternmost third of the map, or something.