Secrets of the Ancients

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beetlenaut
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Secrets of the Ancients

Post by beetlenaut »

You don't need to use the form below, but you can if you like it.

(1) Specify the difficulty level, game version, and scenario if you are reviewing a specific one.

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario/campaign? (1-10)
(What do these numbers mean?)

(3) What did you think about the dialog and story?

(4) What were the major challenges you faced?

(5) How fun do you think the scenario/campaign is? (1-10)

(6) What suggestions do you have to make it more fun?

(7) Did you find any grammatical mistakes or awkward phrasing?

Use the discussion thread for bug reports and other thoughts.
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and WML Guide
GL_Network
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by GL_Network »

(1) Hard, Wesnoth 1.12.2, SotA 1.0.2.

(2) 7. It's challenging and requires good strategy, but beatable. Scenario 5 is noticeably harder than many others, 12 and 18 are hard to beat without major losses, and the difficulty of 14 and 15 depends greatly on what units you have better/more of (flying units makes scenario 14 easier, units with no vulnerability to arcane or fire are basically required to beat scenario 15).

Being the save-scummer I am, I never allowed any strategically important (in the long run) unit to get killed, so I don't know to what extend the loss of high-level units is supposed to make later scenarios harder.

(3) It's very interesting, really. Ardonna and Ras-Tabahn are well-developped. The minor characters (Rudic, Carcyn Fisher III, Shynal and Vendraxxis, but especially Shynal) would need a bit more character development, me guess.

(4) Scenarios 12 and 18 are slightly unpredictable and have a high fatality rate. Scenarios 14 and 15 can be lethal, but only if the player uses the wrong units for the fight (a diverse recall list always helps).

(5) Very fun (I'd say 8?).

(6) In itself, the campaign is very fun, and the plot twist at the end (I don't want to spoil it, but it refers to another campaign. You know what I mean) is wonderful. There are a few nitpicks though:
-The first ghoul you recruit should be called Garcyn, or you should have him added on your recall list, since Garcyn is supposed to be your first ghoul.
-Ardonna says she turned the rest of Rudic's crew into sentient undead, but we only get to see Rudic. If they became a specific type of undead, I suggest you (at least) hint at it.
-A bit more development for Rudic (and Garcyn, if you follow my earlier suggestion), who is hinted to have some degree of "I don't want to be your puppet" toward Ardonna in scenario 5. Presumably, his progressive loss of intelligence could explain why he gets so little development, but I assumed that Ardonna had solved the problem of intelligence when she started to create ghosts?
-Scenario 8 (where Carcyn and Shynal are introduced) could end with a dialogue between them and Ras-Tabahn, to explain where they come from, because currently their motives seem nebulous (especially Shynal; I guess Carcyn is thankful that Ras-Tabahn helped him dispose of his father).
-Talking about the kids, I have another point to bring. If they take the dark adept path, they can AFAIK become liches - but it changes absolutely nothing about the plot. I guess their lichification should be relevant to the storyline somehow (in which case they should be able to become liches even if the player didn't advance them as DAs in the first place).

That pretty much covers all of it.

(7) A few here and there: "mountian" in scenario 20, or "devistating" and "awsome" in Ardonna's ancient lich description. I'm sure there are a few more.

(8) Ok, it may not be the place to mention bugs, but it's sad that scenario 18 doesn't port over the names of your old SotA bats when they get changed for standard Wesnoth bats. It's just a couple more lines of code, but for those like me who nickname their units, it's worth the trouble.
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beetlenaut
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by beetlenaut »

GL_Network wrote:The minor characters (Rudic, Carcyn Fisher III, Shynal and Vendraxxis, but especially Shynal) would need a bit more character development, me guess.
Yeah, maybe. The problem is that focusing too much on all those minor characters would make the dialog a lot longer, and it would get tedious.
GL_Network wrote:(a diverse recall list always helps).
Well, good. I was trying to promote one of those.
GL_Network wrote:-The first ghoul you recruit should be called Garcyn, or you should have him added on your recall list, since Garcyn is supposed to be your first ghoul.
OK, why not. Done. He goes on the recall list, and with a strong trait, too.
GL_Network wrote:-Ardonna says she turned the rest of Rudic's crew into sentient undead, but we only get to see Rudic. If they became a specific type of undead, I suggest you (at least) hint at it.
They don't become anything specific. They become whatever you recruit.
GL_Network wrote:Presumably, his progressive loss of intelligence could explain why he gets so little development, but I assumed that Ardonna had solved the problem of intelligence when she started to create ghosts?
Yes, ghosts can retain their minds, but he's not a ghost. His brain is rotting.
GL_Network wrote:-Scenario 8 ...currently their motives seem nebulous (especially Shynal
I added a couple lines--now it's clear that she's a very good friend of Carcyn. I had it in my mind, but now it's explicit. (It complicated things because I had to add some dialog if either of them dies, but I did that too.)
GL_Network wrote:-Talking about the kids, I have another point to bring. If they take the dark adept path, they can AFAIK become liches - but it changes absolutely nothing about the plot.
I don't know why it would change anything about the plot. You can often choose multiple paths for a loyal unit. That said, I think that adepts (and therefore possibly ancient liches later) is a better choice, so I added some dialog: If you choose a different path, the unit complains and asks you to change your mind.

I fixed the spelling mistakes.
GL_Network wrote:(8) it's sad that scenario 18 doesn't port over the names of your old SotA bats when they get changed for standard Wesnoth bats. It's just a couple more lines of code.
Only one line, actually. It just didn't occur to me to do it. I fixed it.

Thanks for all your comments!
Campaigns: Dead Water,
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Secrets of the Ancients,
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by SigurdFireDragon »

(1) BfW 1.12.5 Started on Hard, switched to Medium on Entering the North after taking a few cracks at Mountain Pass on Hard with what turned out to be way too little gold (119). SotA version 1.02-1.03

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario/campaign? (1-10)
Based on the suggested rating system, 8-9 for when I played it on hard (July-August of 2015, several of those scenarios I had to take 2-3 attempts before I won), 6-7 when I switched to medium (December 2015-January 2016, played a few a second time after winning the first time to get more carryover gold).

(3) What did you think about the dialog and story?
Found it enjoyable and engaging.

(4) What were the major challenges you faced?
Mountain Pass. Got through it when I switched to medium & backtracked to Entering the North to get more gold. I'm glad the option existed to take out the northwest Griffon leader with Wraiths.

(5) How fun do you think the scenario/campaign is? (1-10)
8.

(6) What suggestions do you have to make it more fun?
None, other than keep the griffon leader kill so it doesn't become less fun :P

(7) Did you find any grammatical mistakes or awkward phrasing?
None that I can think of.


Here's my replay of the last scenario. This was my first time playing it, and I had minimal knowledge about it. It's typical of the more cautious, village grabbing with bats to help keep gold up approach that I had developed in the last few scenarios (though I was sloppy about it in this last scenario).
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UnwiseOwl
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by UnwiseOwl »

Ten scenarios into playing through AToS on Diabolical, and let me just say it's been an absolute pleasure so far. Just some thoughts below as I played through the campaign.

Scen 1: Slipping Away
Nice use of ai avoid with the fences. That's a cute touch.
It'd be nice to have zombie rats and wolves. Getting Zombie saurians out of the rats is particularly odd.

Scen 2: Dark Business
I misunderstood and didn't realise that I could recall or recruit other than summoning new zombies. Still won :) (if you do this you don't get the reminder that there's really twelve enemies, which I thought was an amusing touch.)
Given that it's possible to do without skeleton recruits, it might be nice to keep recruits to just zombies in this one, given that after this point you're going to almost entirely abandon them in favour of better units.
There's a bug if you recruit a zombie from a grave and then change focus before it is recruited, allowing you to recruit on any gravestone at a distance.

Scen 3 Bandits:
It's odd that the leader can't see you, thinks you're undead, but still calls you 'wench' when you kill his friend!

Scen 4 Becalmed:
Great scenario.
The other passengers disappearing never to be mentioned again is weird, though. I honestly thought that when I stepped on the trapdoor on the lower deck one of them was going to emerge and either fight or join me. Maybe this could be added or just something added to the dialogue about murdering them :)

Scen 5 Blackwater:
I wonder about the naming of this scenario (and this location in Wesnoth) now that ASoIaF is such a big thing, since The Battle of Blackwater is an important event in that universe. In preparation for this campaign being mainlined might be a good time to rename it.
Otherwise, I really like this one, and the balance on hard difficulty between trying to rush and trying to outlast is just about perfect, to my taste. I had to restart three times, which makes me happy.

Scen 6 Following the Shadow:
I thought the bats were a bit of a tomato. I honestly thought that I could just walk in there with my leader alone, blockade out the orcs and get a quick finish to the level. Nope. I got dead for my troubles.

Scen 7 Carcyn:
It was odd that earlier (in the story) the Vash-Gorn the Shadow had a name, but now he doesn't. Maybe that could be changed?
The objective isn't clear if it's 'all buildings in the town' or 'all named buildings in the town'. The named buildings are cool but confusing, for this reason I'd recommend removing them and just leaving the prison.
Dear god this level is insanely difficult, there's just too much income for the enemy, and by the time you get village parity you're already do far in the red that you'll never be able to recruit. I'm not proud to admit I had to reload this level about a dozen times in order to win it, and at that I considered myself pretty lucky.
I'd seriously recommend a reduction in the sheer number of villages on the map, too.
It might be fun to allow some cool bonus for players that move a unit to the graveyard. A little crew of zombies or something?

Scen 8: Training
I'm enjoying the strange recruiting conditions in these levels, the variety is a lot of fun. The choice in this one, to recall or risk your adepts being overrun and killed, feels like a nice challenge, though it could be made clear that spending in this level doesn't matter.

Scen 9: Merfolk
Not a fight that I've ever seen from the undead end, I think. Very nice. Possibly too easy to bait out the merfolk leader, he could potentially do with a little more personal caution.

I look forward to continuing with this one in the near future. Thanks for making it.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by SigurdFireDragon »

UnwiseOwl wrote: Scen 2: Dark Business
I misunderstood and didn't realise that I could recall or recruit other than summoning new zombies. Still won :) (if you do this you don't get the reminder that there's really twelve enemies, which I thought was an amusing touch.)
Given that it's possible to do without skeleton recruits, it might be nice to keep recruits to just zombies in this one, given that after this point you're going to almost entirely abandon them in favour of better units.
There's a bug if you recruit a zombie from a grave and then change focus before it is recruited, allowing you to recruit on any gravestone at a distance.
Could you be more specific as to how to trigger this bug? (with version #'s as well) The only thing I can get to occur is that the recruit doesn't happen
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by UnwiseOwl »

I'm running 1.13.6 on Windows 10. Don't have the version of the campaign on me right now, but I downloaded it last week, so it's pretty up to date.

If you right click to recruit on a grave, then after clicking recruit quickly right click on another grave anywhere on the map, when you unfocus the zombie will spawn at the location on your second click. This appears to be because the drawing of the 'grave hole' happens first so that the create-unit event is not instantaneous. Could potentially be fixed by creating an invisible unit prior to the drawing of the grave hole to be replaced by the zombie later.

I can provide replays/videos of me doing this if required.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by beetlenaut »

UnwiseOwl wrote:It'd be nice to have zombie rats and wolves. Getting Zombie saurians out of the rats is particularly odd.
Zombie wolves will exist in 1.13.7. Whoever wrote the WML for the rats decided that saurians were the least-bad choice for the WC variation, and I don't see any point in changing it. What would be better anyway? Obviously, it would be nice if someone drew the 18 images needed for us to have zombie rats, but nobody has done that yet.
UnwiseOwl wrote:There's a bug if you recruit a zombie from a grave and then change focus before it is recruited, allowing you to recruit on any gravestone at a distance.
Working on it.
UnwiseOwl wrote:It's odd that the leader can't see you, thinks you're undead, but still calls you 'wench' when you kill his friend!
I was assuming he has finally seen you at that point, but I guess it should be explicit.
UnwiseOwl wrote:The other passengers disappearing never to be mentioned again is weird, though.
That's a good point. I'll think about it.
UnwiseOwl wrote:I wonder about the naming of this scenario (and this location in Wesnoth) now that ASoIaF is such a big thing
It's a pretty obvious name, and there are lots of other "Blackwaters" in the world. I'm not going to change it anyway.
UnwiseOwl wrote:I thought the bats were a bit of a tomato.
I didn't because Ardonna says something might be lurking under the floor.
UnwiseOwl wrote:It was odd that earlier (in the story) the Vash-Gorn the Shadow had a name, but now he doesn't. Maybe that could be changed?
Good catch.
UnwiseOwl wrote:The objective isn't clear if it's 'all buildings in the town' or 'all named buildings in the town'.
It says, "Every building on the map." I think that's pretty clear. Do you have a suggestion for something better? I'm not taking off the names.
UnwiseOwl wrote:Dear god this level is insanely difficult,
Huh. It's not supposed to be an easy scenario, but I've never thought it was that hard either. If you didn't recruit any WCs and use them to convert enemy units, you should have. It helps.
UnwiseOwl wrote:it could be made clear that spending in this level doesn't matter.
The objective note is already pretty long. It makes the objectives box really big as it is, so I don't know if I want it longer. However, do you have a suggestion about how it could be clearer? Now it says, "You will not earn gold this scenario, but your gold from the previous scenario will be available in the next."
UnwiseOwl wrote:I look forward to continuing with this one in the near future. Thanks for making it.
I'm glad you like it!
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UnwiseOwl
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by UnwiseOwl »

It says, "Every building on the map." I think that's pretty clear. Do you have a suggestion for something better? I'm not taking off the names.
I agree, the name buildings are cool, you're right, it would be a bad idea to get rid of them. I think the instructions would be clear, except that then you've designated all those named buildings as 'special' and for some reason to me that seemed to mean 'just take those ones' (maybe I'm thinking of them as 'buildings' and the rest as 'villages', I don't know). Honestly, I think that would be a better objective to just take the named buildings anyway, it would still be a challenge, but wouldn't require you to kill each and every one of the defenders, which claiming every building more or less does, and might allow some 'run and hide' strategies. It could be justified by "Capture their important civic buildings will bring to town to their knees" or something...
Huh. It's not supposed to be an easy scenario, but I've never thought it was that hard either. If you didn't recruit any WCs and use them to convert enemy units, you should have. It helps.
I admit I'm not the best player by any stretch, all I'm trying to say is that this level is a huge jump in difficulty from the preceeding ones, at least on diabolical difficulty. When I tried with lots of corpses, I just didn't have the staying power for the long drawn-out battle. I needed each and every skelly that I could get. I did try, but their poor mobility in the trees pretty much ensured that I had to use them in the open, and then I didn't have the units to cover them, so they died. I'll attach my replay here so that you can see what I mean (and maybe point out something I could have done better other than having my damn skeletons just get a damn sight better at hitting their shots).

Thanks again. Great campaign.
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Last edited by UnwiseOwl on March 13th, 2017, 11:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by SigurdFireDragon »

beetlenaut wrote:
UnwiseOwl wrote:The objective isn't clear if it's 'all buildings in the town' or 'all named buildings in the town'.
It says, "Every building on the map." I think that's pretty clear. Do you have a suggestion for something better? I'm not taking off the names.
I think the use of the non-standard term of 'buildings' when villages is being referred to is causing the confusion

How about "Capture all villages"?


or this:
UnwiseOwl wrote:
It says, "Every building on the map." I think that's pretty clear. Do you have a suggestion for something better? I'm not taking off the names.
I agree, the name buildings are cool, you're right, it would be a bad idea to get rid of them. I think the instructions would be clear, except that then you've designated all those named buildings as 'special' and for some reason to me that seemed to mean 'just take those ones' (maybe I'm thinking of them as 'buildings' and the rest as 'villages', I don't know). Honestly, I think that would be a better objective to just take the named buildings anyway, it would still be a challenge, but wouldn't require you to kill each and every one of the defenders, which claiming every building more or less does, and might allow some 'run and hide' strategies. It could be justified by "Capture their important civic buildings will bring to town to their knees" or something...
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by beetlenaut »

If you want to change it to "Capture all villages," that would be fine. (The reason I didn't use that originally is that this is supposed to take place in ONE village, and those "villages" are supposed to represent buildings on this particular map. I can see how it could be confusing though.)
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by UnwiseOwl »

My replay has been added to the post above. Sorry that I forgot it earlier.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by Inky »

UnwiseOwl wrote:I admit I'm not the best player by any stretch, all I'm trying to say is that this level is a huge jump in difficulty from the preceeding ones, at least on diabolical difficulty. When I tried with lots of corpses, I just didn't have the staying power for the long drawn-out battle. I needed each and every skelly that I could get. I did try, but their poor mobility in the trees pretty much ensured that I had to use them in the open, and then I didn't have the units to cover them, so they died. I'll attach my replay here so that you can see what I mean (and maybe point out something I could have done better other than having my damn skeletons just get a damn sight better at hitting their shots).
Your replay of Carcyn is corrupt from the beginning (mine is too unfortunately - hopefully this can fixed eventually as it is useful for stuff like this). EDIT: never mind, it actually works!

What worked for me was basically only recruiting skeletons/skeleton archers (I recruited only 1 corpse - I relied on plague to make more, and I also recalled the shadow and ghost but did not recruit any more ghosts as they're too expensive), because besides the 2 starting mages the loyalists only recruit units with blade or pierce damage. With the skeletal undead's 40% blade/60% pierce resistances it shouldn't even matter that they're out in the open. (It's amusing to watch the poor spearmen throw their ranged spears at your skeletons because they are too scared to attack in melee :D )

I also made it my top priority to level the half leveled skeleton from the recall list, as having a revenant early on is very helpful. Personally I mainly focused on giving kills to my experienced skeletons (instead of trying to use plague everywhere - I didn't find the corpses too useful because they died almost instantly). Once you start getting level 2s the battle gets a lot easier.

The only other general advice I can think of is to wait near your keep for the first few turns, so that the main battle will begin at nighttime.
Last edited by Inky on March 14th, 2017, 5:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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UnwiseOwl
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by UnwiseOwl »

Weird that it's corrupted. Runs fine on my machine.
(And yes, your strategy sounds pretty similar to what worked for me)
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients

Post by Inky »

:doh: Sorry it actually worked, it was only me being stupid (I thought I had downloaded SotA for 1.13 but I hadn't)

There are a few things I would have done differently. The shadow and 2 ghosts pillaging in the north were really not helping with the battle, and they were a significant gold investment (60 gold + 4 upkeep). The shadow in particular could have backstabbed to death 1 mage or bowman per turn if used in the south, and ghosts are pretty bad so I would have gotten only 1, or none at all.

The other thing is, I think you could have made more kills during the first night. On both first watch and second watch (turns 5 and 6) you had several units which didn't attack. For example on turn 5 you had 3 skeletal undead in the back which didn't get to attack anything because they didn't have hexes available to attack; I think if you had optimized your attacks more (used these units from the back first, and then used the units in front) you could have attacked with every single unit. Also on turn 6 there were several skeletons just shuffling around in the forest/keep, when they all should have been attacking. They would have had to get on open terrain - but who cares about terrain when it's night! :)

Also, I don't think you recalled the half leveled skeleton - getting 16 XP to start with is definitely worth the 5 extra gold! It could have become a revenant pretty early on, which would have helped a lot.
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