the Princess's revenge (strategies)

[winston879]

I'm having a tough time on this one. I have an elven champion, elven avenger, archmage, red mage, knight that's almost level 3, and the three heroes. I usually recruit two shamans at the beginning and sometimes a scout to try to flag a few towns. i've tried sitting in my castle but those wraiths attack me from the water and double team my mages killing them in 1 round. I usually try to send my knight to get the holy water and then level him up to a paladin, but it takes four turns to get him there and back and by then the castle's surrounded.

I've tried a few other strategies like rushing the undead base with the zombies, but they start out with the level 3 baneblade wraiths before they summon zombies, and I can't get through the walking dead before the 8 wraiths from the northern fortress hit my flank. The southern base takes far too long to seige being surrounded by mountains.

I may be a little weak from the previous scenario. I basically won it by sitting my elven champion in a town and killing 2/3 of their force with that single unit while they futilely attacked him over and over again, occaisionally retreating him and putting the elven lord in his place for a few turns while he healed. I also lost my paladin, a knight, and an outrider when those extra enemies popped up at the castle.

Normally, i'd keep trying lots of different strategies, but it really takes a huge amount of time per turn since the enemy has to move 50 units from each base, and I can't imagine getting through this with any of my level 3 units alive which could cripple me in any further scenarios.

tips?

[Groggy_Dice]

Can't write much now, but just a few things.

What difficulty level are you playing on? I've only played the campaign on medium, and haven't returned to it since I started playing campaigns on harder difficulty, so my experience might not be fully valid for you.

That said:

Don't bother with a scout in this scenario, there aren't enough villages in this scenario to be worth grabbing. This scenario will zero out your gold. You slowly build your gold back up in the next scenarios, then fill your coffers in "Northern Winter."

Shamans? By this point in the campaign you should have druids! And some white mages!

Don't level a knight with holy water to a paladin, with the holy water he's already a great undead fighter. Level him to a grand knight instead. Before Valley of Death, you level all but two of your knights to paladins, then give the holy water to knights or grand knights.

The usual winning strategy is to attack south. You don't have to besiege the castle, you kill his army in the open when it comes out to attack you, then you only have to worry about the lich (if he doesn't come out into the open himself, as he sometimes will).

Your recall list does sound weak, and it does sound like you had heavy losses in the earlier scenario. You can't let one unit do all your fighting for you, you need to let other units get some of that XP.

Gotta go for now!

[HomerJ]

Please do a search for the official title of the scenario "The Valley of Death" / "Valley of Death" / "VoD", there have been extensive discussions already.


Greetz
HomerJ

[Groggy_Dice]

Just to add:

If you're not aware of them, the Mainline Campaign Feedback forum can often be of help if you're hung up on a particular scenario. Though not directly aimed at giving strategy tips, in the process of giving feedback, people often will describe how they won the scenario. For this particular scenario, the topic is: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=3402

I have ... archmage, red mage, ... I usually recruit two shamans at the beginning ...

You must be fairly new to Wesnoth, a veteran player would not be relying on shamans for healing this deep into a campaign. He would prioritize leveling some shamans to druids, and wouldn't promote two mages to red mages before having a single white mage. You must not have played South Guard, mentioned at the end of the tutorial. That campaign introduces you to a white mage and a druid/shyde, and probably would have clued you in to the value of their healing. The advice in the help, that "it is recommended that you start with the Heir to the Throne campaign first," is really awful.

If you've been relying on shamans (and only two of them) for your healing, it's no wonder you've lost so many units in earlier scenarios! On medium, I generally would use at least two druids/shydes and two or three white mages in Valley of Death. There's people who would probably recommend more.

I have ... knight that's almost level 3 ...

Um... that would be Haldiel, right? The loyal guy you got in Blackwater Port? If you've lost him, ouch. Again, a veteran would be very careful with Haldiel.

If you've made it this far, you have the potential to be a decent Wesnoth player. The good news is, Valley of Death is considered the hardest scenario in the campaign, so if you can survive it, you'll be set.

[Demon_Llama]

The following strategy worked for me, while playing on Hard. It may not be brilliant, but it worked rather well in my case, I don't know if it'll work with the units you have. Instead of attacking South, I ran West as fast as I could and decided to hole up there. The trick is to beat the northern army which comes at you from the top, utilizing the little forest with your Elves. You should be able to pound the snot out of them before the East and South Lichs can get their forces to you. Then you turn around and defend using the mountains, the lake and the small grassland entrance to your "base". They'll send wraiths through the mountains to the north of the lake, and skeletons through the narrow strip south of the lake, but you should be able to hold them off.

[MRDNRA]

I've attached a replay that I just did of this level on Medium difficulty, although I must admit that I don't feel like I played it particularly well anyway, and wouldn't mind some advice from some other players as to how I could've played better. However, it should give an idea of one way to win if you have enough troops, and are prepared to lose a few.

I must admit, rather than recalling the nearly levelled up level 1s I should've just recruited some more (I had been hoping to level them up, but as things played out, I lost them all!). I ended up losing all 3 lvl 1 mages I recalled, plus a white mage (not Elrian though, or the druid and the shyde I have, so I still have a good amount of healing).

This is actually the first time I've even had a good go at this level on medium, the times I had played it before on easy, if I recall correctly, I only recruited/recalled one keeps worth of troops (and that was when I still used saveloading a lot, this run through I'm only using it when I lose the main characters).

[jonadab]

I've attached a replay that I just did of this level on Medium difficulty, although I must admit that I don't feel like I played it particularly well anyway, and wouldn't mind some advice from some other players as to how I could've played better. However, it should give an idea of one way to win if you have enough troops, and are prepared to lose a few.

You are truly the Lord of Epirus.

Does anybody have a strategy that won't leave me finishing with a scarce dozen experienced units to my name, only four of them level-3 counting Konrad, NONE of them archer-class?

Admittedly, it's been a while since I played through this campaign, but I have these memories of playing a number of additional scenarios after this one...

[jonadab]

Here's my latest failure. Kalenz isn't the issue -- I could presumably go back and position him differently (the previous turn, perhaps) and somehow save him, at least for a couple more turns.

As you can see, though, the only way I'm avoiding being triple-teamed (and thus losing experienced units) is by giving ground, and there isn't enough more ground to give. Meanwhile, the battle lines are getting longer, spreading me thinner, and neither foe is running low on units. There's no reason to believe I will be able to break through to the southern keep.

Do I need to go back to the last turn at Elensifar and elect toplay the isle instead of the peninsula? I had hoped both paths were playable, each in their own way. Should I instead go back to Anduin and concentrate more on leveling up a lot of mages, at the expense of other unit types? Doing very much of that seems unlikely to leave me in a good position later in the campaign.

Is there some way I can sacrifice some level-1 units that will effectively delay the eastern wraiths long enough to let me get to the southern keep? I cannot see how -- and my keep isn't large enough to recruit very many level-1 units, even if I had unlimited gold.

Do I just not have enough high-level units?

What am I missing?

[HomerJ]

First of all, did you do a little research in the forums like I advised OP in post 2? Then, if you are afraid to loose your valuable recalls, why recall them? Scenario is perfectly doable with only fodder thieves. Use them to slow down enemies and run to the south east corner of the map.

Greetz
HomerJ

[averyimaginativename]

Replay, losing not much.

I got a little lucky a couple of times. Should probably have lost a unit during the assault on the Southern lich.

Things go pear shaped in the last 3 turns or so. Had I lost anything important, I'd have gone back and sacrificed the Grand Knight instead of risking other units to save it, then then just held formation.

[jonadab]

First of all, did you do a little research in the forums like I advised OP in post 2?

Of course. This was one of the MORE helpful results I found. (Granted, I had not yet finished going through all of the results. I did however spend the better part of an hour going through old threads, including the feedback thread, which turned up repeatedly in results of my first search. I only found this thread later.)

Then, if you are afraid to loose your valuable recalls, why recall them?

As I explained elsewhere (in the feedback thread, I think), I found fresh level-1 recruits unable to hold off the enemy for anywhere near long enough. I found this to be true no matter how much gold you have and no matter how many level-1 units you can recruit.

Scenario is perfectly doable with only fodder thieves. Use them to slow down enemies and run to the south east corner of the map.

Okay... I hadn't thought of spamming thieves. I can try that, although I'm not clear on why thieves would be better than other level-1 units for this scenario. If they're particularly good against undead, it's news to me.

I also hadn't tried the southeast corner. I can try that too.

The replay you posted won't load in 1.8, so I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. I may have to download a more recent version. (Hopefully I can get it to compile without upgrading a whole bunch of libraries... I'll try that some time this week.)

[HomerJ]

Okay... I hadn't thought of spamming thieves. I can try that, although I'm not clear on why thieves would be better than other level-1 units for this scenario. If they're particularly good against undead, it's news to me.

They are not terrible at least (blade damage) but the two things are: They are dead cheap and have nice dodge. So you can run decoy thieves everywhere, position them on 70% defence and watch them die slowly.

The replay you posted won't load in 1.8, so I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. I may have to download a more recent version. (Hopefully I can get it to compile without upgrading a whole bunch of libraries... I'll try that some time this week.)

Was that for me? If I posted a replay somewhere in some other thread it will be 1.6 probably.

Edit: You probably meant averyimaginativename's replay which is 1.9.7.


Greetz
HomerJ

[ayearhasgone]

It took me at least 20 times to beat this scenario. I finally did it by recruiting fodder thieves to occupy trees and villages, and then recalling all my level 2's and 3's to surround Konrad and make a mad dash for the mountains in the southeast. I only had a level 2 Knight (not Haldiel ) and no leveled mages, because I haven't quite figured out how to work with those units and not have them killed on the counterattack.

I lost the loyal white Mage of 05 Isle of the Damned, but I was so happy to win that I didn't care.

[PorkSol]

(Routes are not exact)

1) Powerful/fast unit grabs holy water, hugs map edge, kills lich on the 2nd day
2) Powerful/fast unit grabs holy water, hugs map edge/hills, kills lich on 2nd day
(The liches will be unguarded by the second day, you should have a clean shot at them as long as you avoid aggroing any wandering wraiths. Strong grand knights one shot liches w/holy water, but you have some margin for error on killing them so other speedy and powerful units should work, they don't need to die in one turn)
3) Main force smashes southern lich and occupies his castle. His forces will happily charge out to meet you on open ground, so it's not that hard.
4) Freshly recruited level one elves hold the forest and buy time with their lives

You never have to fight green or purple's armies if you don't want to, so this scenario isn't that bad.

[PieFlavor]

What worked for me: in the first turn recall all old units, and on the second turn, recruit fresh meat and send them to distract east, they will die gloriously but will buy you enough time to clear southwest, after that just hole up and finish off all wraiths from the other liches, you can make an assassination squad if you look forward to killing all 3 liches as they just stand alone on their castles when their army moves out, leaving room for paladins to kill them easily

In the replay: my army was considerably bigger than yours, so maybe when holing up on southwest just keep recruiting units with Konrad. And even tough I suffered minimal losses, I could have easily avoided the death of that elvish Marshall...