Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes

2010-01-15 12:30:43 pm

Hello everyone. I'm new here, but I just had to register to bring this up. I love watching speedruns. However, I'm not the man to speedrun this game myself, being a fan of slow-paced turn-based strategy games and lacking the mental dexterity to think between frames. That in mind, I wanted to gauge/drum up interest for this game, because I think this game is awesome, needs more fan support, and has some serious speed running potential. It would be awesome to see someone here do it justice.

This game was very recently (Dec 2009) released for the Nintendo DS by a relatively unknown studio called Capybara Games. It is set in the same universe as the popular Might and Magic/Heroes of Might and Magic series. Plot wise, it is a direct prequel to Heroes of Might and Magic V. However, gameplay-wise, it diverges significantly from the classic series. Stack based strategy gameplay is replaced with an intriguing puzzle/strategy hybrid that is accessible and simple, but has some deeper strategy elements. I've heard it compared to Puzzle Quest, and often people claim that this game is better (I haven't played both, so I can't make any claims myself).

Being from an unknown developer, this game itself seems to have gone under the popular radar a bit. However, critical reaction has been extremely favorable; I believe IGN rated it as the best DS strategy game of 2009.

Check it out here if you're interested and unfamiliar with it: http://www.capybaragames.com/might-magic-clash-of-heroes/

Getting to the elements that make this game of interest to speedrunners:

-The game is relatively short for a strategy game. I've cleared the game 100%, without any attempt at speed, in about 17 hours. Someone actually trying to go fast and doing any% could probably make a demo short enough to be watchable.

-Some parts can be skipped, such as many optional sidequests. The tutorial/prologue can be skipped by pausing. There is a lot of text in the game, but all cutscenes and dialog can be skipped by pressing start.

-There is a lot of thought exercise in planning how to complete battles as quickly as possible. When your creatures attack, any enemy creatures on the opposing side absorb your damage. So there might be some interesting planning regarding the minimum number of attacks you need to make against an undefended column to defeat an enemy hero. Your creatures continue attacking even after the enemy hero is defeated, so you must be careful not to have too much extra damage/formations, or wasteful animation will occur.

Which artifacts and troops are best to equip, how best to attack the enemy hero without losing attack potency or dying, how to keep your Elite/Champion units alive, etc. are all interesting problems for a speedrunner.

-Luck/AI manipulation will be a major factor. Each time battle begins, the troops you "draw" and the way they form up are random. A part of it might simply be reloading X battle until you get great starting positions.

The AI can also be manipulated into wasting actions/attacking less effectually.

-Route planning is interesting. The game has some nonlinear elements, and you can often choose the order of some battles. An optimized route would plan the best order of the battles to maximize your ability to defeat AI heroes quickly. The player will need to weigh the value of fighting more battles and getting a higher level against the time spent doing so. There are some decisions to be made, such as figuring out if more time is saved taking a small detour to get a potent artifact, for example.

-Unlike most DS games, the game can be entirely controlled with the directional pad and buttons. It does not require a stylus. This means a video can be captured without someone's hand obstructing the video, and also makes emulation possible (but buy this game, please.). It may be faster to control the game with the stylus though, I'm not sure about that.

Doing a purely casual, not-optimized speedrun of the prologue and first campaign, I was able to clear this portion of the game in under an hour. I suspect finishing the whole game in under 10 hours is easily attainable. Perhaps even under 6/7 hours.

Thread title:

Hello everyone.  I'm new here, but I just had to register to bring this up.  I love watching speedruns.  However, I'm not the man to speedrun this game myself, being a fan of slow-paced turn-based strategy games and lacking the mental dexterity to think between frames.   That in mind, I wanted to gauge/drum up interest for this game, because I think this game is awesome, needs more fan support, and has some serious speed running potential.  It would be awesome to see someone here do it justice.

This game was very recently (Dec 2009) released for the Nintendo DS by a relatively unknown studio called Capybara Games.  It is set in the same universe as the popular Might and Magic/Heroes of Might and Magic series.  Plot wise, it is a direct prequel to Heroes of Might and Magic V.  However, gameplay-wise, it diverges significantly from the classic series.  Stack based strategy gameplay is replaced with an intriguing puzzle/strategy hybrid that is accessible and simple, but has some deeper strategy elements.  I've heard it compared to Puzzle Quest, and often people claim that this game is better (I haven't played both, so I can't make any claims myself).

Being from an unknown developer, this game itself seems to have gone under the popular radar a bit.  However, critical reaction has been extremely favorable; I believe IGN rated it as the best DS strategy game of 2009.

Check it out here if you're interested and unfamiliar with it:  http://www.capybaragames.com/might-magic-clash-of-heroes/

Getting to the elements that make this game of interest to speedrunners:

-The game is relatively short for a strategy game.  I've cleared the game 100%, without any attempt at speed, in about 17 hours.  Someone actually trying to go fast and doing any% could probably make a demo short enough to be watchable.

-Some parts can be skipped, such as many optional sidequests.  The tutorial/prologue can be skipped by pausing.  There is a lot of text in the game, but all cutscenes and dialog can be skipped by pressing start.

-There is a lot of thought exercise in planning how to complete battles as quickly as possible.  When your creatures attack, any enemy creatures on the opposing side absorb your damage.  So there might be some interesting planning regarding the minimum number of attacks you need to make against an undefended column to defeat an enemy hero.  Your creatures continue attacking even after the enemy hero is defeated, so you must be careful not to have too much extra damage/formations, or wasteful animation will occur.

Which artifacts and troops are best to equip, how best to attack the enemy hero without losing attack potency or dying, how to keep your Elite/Champion units alive, etc. are all interesting problems for a speedrunner.

-Luck/AI manipulation will be a major factor.  Each time battle begins, the troops you "draw" and the way they form up are random.  A part of it might simply be reloading X battle until you get great starting positions.

The AI can also be manipulated into wasting actions/attacking less effectually.

-Route planning is interesting.  The game has some nonlinear elements, and you can often choose the order of some battles.  An optimized route would plan the best order of the battles to maximize your ability to defeat AI heroes quickly.  The player will need to weigh the value of fighting more battles and getting a higher level against the time spent doing so.  There are some decisions to be made, such as figuring out if more time is saved taking a small detour to get a potent artifact, for example.

-Unlike most DS games, the game can be entirely controlled with the directional pad and buttons.  It does not require a stylus.  This means a video can be captured without someone's hand obstructing the video, and also makes emulation possible (but buy this game, please.).  It may be faster to control the game with the stylus though, I'm not sure about that.

Doing a purely casual, not-optimized speedrun of the prologue and first campaign, I was able to clear this portion of the game in under an hour.  I suspect finishing the whole game in under 10 hours is easily attainable.  Perhaps even under 6/7 hours.

Blackbird

Edit history:

Blackbird: 2010-02-10 12:31:27 am

2010-02-10 12:10:28 am

Bumping this to post an update. I just ran a speedrun which cleared this game in 4:50 (4 hours and 50 minutes). This exceeded all my expectations, I was amazed at how fast some parts went. No special sequence breaks, only one minor exploit used. I largely just used the most direct path through the game, fighting as few battles as possible.

Here are a few notes on how I did it.

Sylvan campaign: Cleared 0:58 in. 58 minutes.

This was probably the easiest to run, because Anwen is totally hax. I used 3xArchers, Dragons, and Druids. I avoided Unicorns, because you have to fight an extra battle to get them, and I wouldn't have had the funds to purchase them anyway because I minimized the number of battles. Treants were avoided for the same reason. I equipped the Phoenix Feather and fought many battles very recklessly, taking lots of damage to use Sniper Shot often. This allowed me to clear battles quickly. You can skip the prologue battles by pressing start.

Haven Campaign: Cleared roughly 2:10 in. 1 hour 12 minutes.

The Haven campaign wasn't hard, just took a while because this is the most defensive faction. The best way to get offense early on is to use large Linked formations of Pikemen. The Golden Spear significantly improves this strategy, so I took a small detour to get it. The puzzles don't take very long to complete, anyway. The arena was somewhat challenging; the Academy heroes would often disrupt my offense with Lightning Bolt, forcing me to retry. I decided to use 3xPikemen and Griffins, but the Griffins might have been a bit of a mistake. I assumed the Boss would count as a "stronger formation" for the purpose of the Griffin's power (and thus take massive/instagib damage) but this wasn't the case. It probably would have been better to go with paired Angels. Swordmasters were avoided because of the extra battle/cost. Godric's Holy Shield allowed me to play pretty recklessly and not defend myself too much.

Necropolis Campaign: Cleared 3:02 in. 52 minutes.

This campaign was extremely easy. I made up some time here because Fiona is very strong; like Anwen-lite. Get Vampires, get the hax Spider Cloak, do double damage, gg enemies. To combat the low-life penalty of Spider Cloak, I used Vampires pretty exclusively, supplementing them with Bone Dragons only for the final few encounters. Zombies are a no-brainer for the Core unit; they have great defense and make Fiona's Blood Ritual very powerful. The final battle vs Ludmilla was pretty interesting; I had to come up with novel strategies to defeat her quickly. At the beginning of the battle, she spawns Bone Dragons in front of her to attack you. However, sometimes she randomly leaves a space in front of her through which you can attack. I utilized this to defeat her before she could make her second attack.

Inferno Campaign: Cleared 3:39 in. 37 minutes.

I was amazed at how fast I completed this campaign; a little under 40 minutes. I used 2x Hellhound, 1x Horned Grunt, and solo-Hell Chargers for almost everything, taking a small detour to pick up the extremely powerful Rage Shield to boost my offense. I save/loaded to avoid any random encounters in the cave. I generally avoided Succubus because they have an extremely long attack animation, however, I did use them in the bartender fight. Their splash damage makes this fight -much- shorter, because you can ignite the boss several times with the splash damage. Unfortunately, I had to skip the amazing Sorcerer unit because they would have been prohibitively expensive, with me skipping most battles. The boss was quite difficult, it took me a long time to both do damage effectively and defend myself well.

Academy Campaign: Cleared at 4:50. 1 hour, 11 minutes.

I had forgotten how long this campaign was. It doesn't seem that long lengthwise, but it's deceiving because it's a series of non-stop battles. You start with a series of scripted battles, then final battles take up a fair bit of time, too. For the first few battles, they have obvious solutions. Ghosts vs the Inferno battle, Druids+Unicorns vs the Rakshasa, and dual Angels vs the cursing enemy.

After you get into the bulk of the campaign, it drags a bit. Academy's offense is plain awful... at least Haven has good low-tier offense. It doesn't help that Nadia's spell is frustratingly random, too. Anyway, I make do with Mages (Djinn are even more awful). Gremlins have lousy offense vs. the enemy hero, but it's still better than the other Academy Core units, which are terrible. The only real way I found to speed up the early battles was to RNG-abuse and Fuse Mages several times. You don't get Rakshasas until late in the campaign, which is a shame, because they are the best offensive unit (overall) that the Academy has to offer. I decided to skip the Phoenix, because of the extra battle.

The final battles are challenging. I beat Aidan with dual Angels... Abyssal Lords are kinda suck (fortunately for me) so the tanking Angel survives, heals, then drops Aidan. I utilized an exploit to make Azh Rafir stupidly easy. If you hit one of his Champions with a Sorcerer and then leave the idle unit alone, script to continue the battle doesn't trigger and you can pummel him freely.

The final boss was pretty hard. I managed to clear it in 8 minutes with an extremely lucky Linked Rakshasa attack that did a massive 260 damage in 5 turns. The rest was made up by Lightning Bolt; I used the Absorb Circlet to delete walls and spam the spell often.

This was probably the hardest campaign.

A few more general observations for speedrunning:

-Avoid units with extremely long attack animation, like Succubus.
-Artifacts seemed well worth it. With planning, it took little time to get them, and it made many battles significantly easier (or doable).
-Script-breaking can be used to make the Azh Rafir extremely simple/easy. Maybe other boss encounters can be broken as well?
-You can use save/loading to avoid random battles for the few times you are forced to enter those areas.

Bumping this to post an update.  I just ran a speedrun which cleared this game in 4:50 (4 hours and 50 minutes).  This exceeded all my expectations, I was amazed at how fast some parts went.  No special sequence breaks, only one minor exploit used.  I largely just used the most direct path through the game, fighting as few battles as possible.

Here are a few notes on how I did it.

Sylvan campaign:  Cleared 0:58 in.  58 minutes.

This was probably the easiest to run, because Anwen is totally hax.  I used 3xArchers, Dragons, and Druids.  I avoided Unicorns, because you have to fight an extra battle to get them, and I wouldn't have had the funds to purchase them anyway because I minimized the number of battles.  Treants were avoided for the same reason.  I equipped the Phoenix Feather and fought many battles very recklessly, taking lots of damage to use Sniper Shot often.  This allowed me to clear battles quickly.  You can skip the prologue battles by pressing start.

Haven Campaign:  Cleared roughly 2:10 in.  1 hour 12 minutes.

The Haven campaign wasn't hard, just took a while because this is the most defensive faction.  The best way to get offense early on is to use large Linked formations of Pikemen.  The Golden Spear significantly improves this strategy, so I took a small detour to get it.  The puzzles don't take very long to complete, anyway.  The arena was somewhat challenging; the Academy heroes would often disrupt my offense with Lightning Bolt, forcing me to retry.  I decided to use 3xPikemen and Griffins, but the Griffins might have been a bit of a mistake. I assumed the Boss would count as a "stronger formation" for the purpose of the Griffin's power (and thus take massive/instagib damage) but this wasn't the case.  It probably would have been better to go with paired Angels.  Swordmasters were avoided because of the extra battle/cost.  Godric's Holy Shield allowed me to play pretty recklessly and not defend myself too much.

Necropolis Campaign:  Cleared 3:02 in.  52 minutes.

This campaign was extremely easy.  I made up some time here because Fiona is very strong; like Anwen-lite.  Get Vampires, get the hax Spider Cloak, do double damage, gg enemies.  To combat the low-life penalty of Spider Cloak, I used Vampires pretty exclusively, supplementing them with Bone Dragons only for the final few encounters.  Zombies are a no-brainer for the Core unit; they have great defense and make Fiona's Blood Ritual very powerful.  The final battle vs Ludmilla was pretty interesting; I had to come up with novel strategies to defeat her quickly.  At the beginning of the battle, she spawns Bone Dragons in front of her to attack you.  However, sometimes she randomly leaves a space in front of her through which you can attack.  I utilized this to defeat her before she could make her second attack.

Inferno Campaign:  Cleared 3:39 in.  37 minutes.

I was amazed at how fast I completed this campaign; a little under 40 minutes.  I used 2x Hellhound, 1x Horned Grunt, and solo-Hell Chargers for almost everything, taking a small detour to pick up the extremely powerful Rage Shield to boost my offense.  I save/loaded to avoid any random encounters in the cave.  I generally avoided Succubus because they have an extremely long attack animation, however, I did use them in the bartender fight.  Their splash damage makes this fight -much- shorter, because you can ignite the boss several times with the splash damage.  Unfortunately, I had to skip the amazing Sorcerer unit because they would have been prohibitively expensive, with me skipping most battles.  The boss was quite difficult, it took me a long time to both do damage effectively and defend myself well.

Academy Campaign:  Cleared at 4:50.  1 hour, 11 minutes.

I had forgotten how long this campaign was.  It doesn't seem that long lengthwise, but it's deceiving because it's a series of non-stop battles.  You start with a series of scripted battles, then final battles take up a fair bit of time, too.  For the first few battles, they have obvious solutions.  Ghosts vs the Inferno battle, Druids+Unicorns vs the Rakshasa, and dual Angels vs the cursing enemy.

After you get into the bulk of the campaign, it drags a bit.  Academy's offense is plain awful... at least Haven has good low-tier offense.  It doesn't help that Nadia's spell is frustratingly random, too.  Anyway, I make do with Mages (Djinn are even more awful).  Gremlins have lousy offense vs. the enemy hero, but it's still better than the other Academy Core units, which are terrible.  The only real way I found to speed up the early battles was to RNG-abuse and Fuse Mages several times.  You don't get Rakshasas until late in the campaign, which is a shame, because they are the best offensive unit (overall) that the Academy has to offer.  I decided to skip the Phoenix, because of the extra battle.

The final battles are challenging.  I beat Aidan with dual Angels... Abyssal Lords are kinda suck (fortunately for me) so the tanking Angel survives, heals, then drops Aidan.  I utilized an exploit to make Azh Rafir stupidly easy.  If you hit one of his Champions with a Sorcerer and then leave the idle unit alone, script to continue the battle doesn't trigger and you can pummel him freely.

The final boss was pretty hard.  I managed to clear it in 8 minutes with an extremely lucky Linked Rakshasa attack that did a massive 260 damage in 5 turns.  The rest was made up by Lightning Bolt; I used the Absorb Circlet to delete walls and spam the spell often.

This was probably the hardest campaign.

A few more general observations for speedrunning:

-Avoid units with extremely long attack animation, like Succubus.  
-Artifacts seemed well worth it.  With planning, it took little time to get them, and it made many battles significantly easier (or doable).  
-Script-breaking can be used to make the Azh Rafir extremely simple/easy.  Maybe other boss encounters can be broken as well?  
-You can use save/loading to avoid random battles for the few times you are forced to enter those areas.

WingedKitsune

2010-02-10 03:12:53 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

I wonder how fast a 100% run could be done in. You said 17 hours without going for speed. I wouldn't doubt it could go below ten for a speed run, but I wouldn't know. Don't have the game.

Blackbird

2010-02-10 02:08:55 pm

It's hard to say how long a 100% run would take. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say there are about as many optional battles in this game as there are mandatory ones. So an estimate of 10 hours seems pretty reasonable.

How is 100% completion usually established at SDA? Would it also include collecting all artifacts and unlockable troop types? This game has a finite number of resources sitting on the map, would you have to collect all of them?

WingedKitsune

2010-02-11 03:16:06 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Well, I think 100% on SDA does whatever you think is deemed necessary. But I would think collecting all unlockable troops and artifacts would be mandatory. The Resources could probably be limited to whatever you think is necessary.

I'm not a mod here, so I'm not exactly sure. But I think that's basically the gist of it.

I don't think the optional battles are mandatory. Plus I think if the game has it's own 100% counter, it might be wise to look at that.

ShinerCCC

2010-04-20 04:06:00 am

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

Just started playing this on my R4 and ZOMG IT'S AWSUM!!11 I loved Heroes 2 and 3 so this is a worthy addition to the series. I'm partway through the Necropolis campaign right now, the game is easier now that I've got the hang of how to make awesome chains and stuff. Will definitely buy this game next time I see it, fresh games like DO WORK this deserve to GET MONEY, etc.

Everything you've described for a route so far rings true. Golden Spear rapes. Except I found Griffins to be useless, or bugged, or something...Angels are far better. Sword Masters do huge damage but yeah, out of the way.

Levelups don't seem necessary, except for some encounters where you're just outgunned. Resources are always in abundance, you can just buy a few of the Elite of your choice and that's usually good enough.

As for random battles, you can press B to reject them...lolz. Wish I knew that while I was doing Haven though.

getter77

2010-04-20 07:46:17 pm

100% runs=great to watch

The next thing to investigate is the upcoming 360 digital release as I think they've changed some stuff around---unsure as to whether it'll affect the time potentials or not though.

Blackbird

Edit history:

Blackbird: 2011-05-05 09:53:16 am

2011-05-05 09:52:17 am

Hello everyone. Just bumping up this thread to let you know that:

1) Clash of Heroes HD has been released on X360 and PS3.
2) I believe the HD version does even more to make tracking ingame time easy, like recording per-campaign completion time.
3) I've added a post to Capy's forums as well to track the speedrunning leaderboards.
4) My kusorun is still the only speedrun of this game. Get playing!

I hope to see some of you running and posting times soon ;).

mahboyy

Edit history:

mahboyy: 2014-03-28 04:00:14 am

mahboyy: 2014-03-28 03:59:11 am

mahboyy: 2014-03-28 03:52:00 am

2014-02-03 07:22:41 pm

King Lurkinian

Hello,

This is my first post on SDA forums so I'm not quite sure if I can submit a run on Clash of Heroes.

In any case, I have a (very laggy but still viewable) run of the game's Steam version in 5:15.50 on my twitch channel: http://www.twitch.tv/mahboyy/c/3654759

I'm not sure it's WR but in any case, that's my current personal best, which I'm not too interested in beating until someone shows a better time for the game on this version.

I know from this thread that there's a faster time on the DS version, which I believe sports better loading times and I know for a fact has much faster animations in-game.

Whether this is a record or not, here are my strats and method for playing the run:

-I start off at Anwen's campaign by loading a save. The tutorials cannot be skipped in the Steam version and they are a very sequential(3 fights out of which only one actually has a chance of making you wait another turn, in which case I would reset), and since the DS version run skips the tutorial, I load a previous save just at the start of Anwen's campaign.

-Anwen's campaign is quite straightforward for the first five fights. Equip the Leaf Plate next to Findan, use a mixed team of all basic units and train your deers, only your deers. Don't equip the Druids when offered, they slow down the fights and their firepower is piss poor compared to the deers. The mix of basics is necessary for both Anwen's campaign and the Gauntlet later in the game, so they all have to be raised to level 5 as an optimal strat.
The 6th fight in Anwen's campaign is the first "aim at that one target" fight of the game, and it might be to your advantage to equip only bears for this fight as a safe strat. I go with a mixed team in my PB, and do it in 4 turns, which is quite poor.
The rest of Anwen's campaign is pretty straightforward with two exceptions. To reach level 7 in time and gain a few units their levels early, after you fought Varkas in the Elven village, take the first puzzle fight in the village, then go on your way to the Seed fight. When you cross the river, you must ABSOLUTELY take the Life Ring and not equip it. As soon as you have level 5 basic units, you can take them all out and go full Pixie, which holds the greatest offensive potential for any basics of the game. I usually only do it for the penultimate fight of Anwen at the Succubi and use only Deers and Pixies for both the Succubi fight and the Azexes boss fight.

Azexes himself is rather easy but can take a beating, so attack him with linked pixies/deers, then protect yourself either by attacking his fireballs or setting up a few units and one layer of walls in front of them. Your target must be to cut his attack just so it deals less than half your HP, so you can get your MP bar fully charged once, use your Arrow Storm attack on him, and have his second fireball wave take a little less than the other half of your HP, sending your mana up again. Repeat linked attacks on him and remember that if you followed my route, your arrows will deal exactly 25 damage to him.

-Godric's campaign is likely the 2nd worst in the game. The amount of aim-at-this-only-in-this-specific-order battles is just ridiculous and you can get to restart a battle at the slightest whim of the RNG. At first, equip the Swordsmen and attack with Fusions. When the archers come to you, unequip them immediately. They are a complete cancer and you will never use them in real battles. When you get the archers, go to the cave on the right and loot both chests, one of which contains the Lion's Mane, the only artifact you will equip through this campaign. Go back out and up the road, enter the bar, speak to nobody and come out, do the prison gate fight with either 1x Swordsmen 2x Spearmen or 2xSwordsmen 1xSpearmen. Go to the Priestess temple and buy one Priestess which you will not equip. Go back in the bar and accept the puzzle fight from Rolly. That'll give you a free level for both Knights and Priestesses. Come out, buy all the Knights you can from the Stables on the east, and go north to do the next fight.

Once you've won, unequip every single unit and put archers everywhere. Go up and do the Archers fight. Since your own archers shoot in 2 turns, that should help you make this tedious RNG-hell fight faster. A note to remember, I'm fairly sure that it's impossible for the Archers to stay hidden behind the pillars for more than one turn. If you can time yourself right, you will be able to shoot them in-between hiding times, if need be.
Talk to the aunt, don't equip the Priestesses, reequip your own desired number of Swordsmen and Spearmen along with Knights, go east to buy one Griffin only which you won't equip, enter the Arena and do the 3 fights in a row.
From the moment you enter the Arena, Godric's campaign starts being quite good, great even. The Lion's Mane used on a lucky 2 Knights fusion can finish almost every fight in one attack, so spamming Fused Knights with a link or two is almost certain victory. The rest of the campaign is completely straightforward, go to the Castle, don't equip any new artifact, go to Count Carlyle and loot his chest, you can equip the Archangels if you wish but I find it to lose time in most cases, go back to the Castle and defeat Carlyle.

Carlyle himself takes 3 turns for his small biles to attack you, so if you can launch attacks during your very first turn, do it. After that, only prepare walls and Knights to attack Carlyle himself, don't lose time with the bile. When Carlyle's baton's countdown reaches around 1, DO NOT call reinforcements even if that means you do nothing that turn. Spam Knights and Swordsmen, Fuse if you can, and he should be done quickly.

-Fiona's campaign is a notch harder than the first two. When you start off, do the first fights for Sir Skeleton and Markal. Go to the south, along the way you should see a money chest west of you, go take it and buy two vampires to the southeast with it. Enter the crypt(WARNING: if you get attacked by a random enemy in the crypt, take the fight, do not reject it) and go towards the skeleton at the North. Talk to him twice and give him 10 as password, take the treasure. Go talk to the Pirate to the east, do his first puzzle, and you should be level 4 if you have also done the random fight. Leave the crypt and go back to Sir Skeleton to win the Spider Cloak from him. This fight can be extremely tedious and difficult depending on your own luck and his defensive stance. The best strategy is to let him attack you hard enough to fill your MP bar, and use a vampire to attack him and take your HP back. Repeat while spamming the Blood Ritual until he falls. In my PB I got exceptional luck at this fight and ended it very quickly, but it can take about 3 times that number of turns to win this.

Now that you have the Spider Cloak equipped, you are a bulldozer with wooden tracks. Your offense is tremendous but your HP is a pitiful 7. I made a big mistake during my Lady of the Crypt fight in my PB and died a stupid death because I didn't play offensively. With the SC, you should always play offensively. Never make walls. If you're about to be attacked, set up an attack in front to tank it. The Spider Cloak gives you tremendous charge power and you can abuse it a lot. You must always think offensively and even your defense should be taken care of by attacking units.

Once you have the SC, go back in the crypt, defeat the Lady(kudos if you can kill the Death Knight before he attacks, I rarely manage it), take the ghosts and go west. Enter the building, buy all the ghosts you can, go North defeat both demons and Mages. Take the chests on your right and left, and go down to buy 3 Death Knights, which you will equip instead of the Vampires, but not use.
DKs are necessary for the last 4 fights of Fiona's campaign(2 of them really, they're not that needed for the rest). They are a massive bother before that point, but you need to train their levels. If one gets in your way during the campaign, don't hesitate to kill it off, you need only one to be alive in your team to take all the XP.

From that point on, things are straightforward again. Go on with the classic route with no detours or puzzle fights, the Titan fight near Sir Skeleton, the Demons fight, Mages, and Necromancer Priests fight(each of them needs about 40 damage to fall, a good ghost or 3 groups of basic units will do the job). Buy some more Death Knights before entering Ludmilla, and fight your way up. The last fight before Ludmilla sports a big charging DK behind a massive bone wall. This is why you've had to level up your own DKs for all this time: to get through this part without taking 15 turns.

On a side note, I have been wondering if going full Zombies isn't a better strategy, but I never saw it as particularly powerful so I never experimented with it much.

Ludmilla herself is a terrible boss to do unprepared with the Spider Cloak. The perfect strategy is to have a Champion unit(in this case a DK, I used to use Bone Dragons) on the 2nd and 3rd columns from the left. It must be activated between the 2nd and 6th turn to work. Ludmilla will summon two Bone Dragons, which must be poisoned with Zombies and destroyed/defended against with Ghosts or all the charged units you can find. If the DK is perfectly placed, the left Dragon will crash into it, so you can afford to only take care of the right one. Once the Dragons are gone, Ludmilla will move to the left and take 4 turns to prepare a laser attack. With a strong DK in front of her, she can have 2/3rds of her health bar destroyed in just one attack. This placement takes a lot of luck though, so don't hesitate to retreat a lot to get a good start. If you can manage it in time, you get a very quick win. Also please know that Ludmilla is weak to poisoning by Zombies. Attacking her with a Zombie group and her Dragons usually make the fight quite easier on you.

-Aidan's campaign is probably the fastest along with Anwen's. Admittedly, it's the campaign I optimised the least out of all. I usually go with mixed teams 1x Hellhound 1x Horned Demon 1x Imp, but 3x HH isn't a bad strat either. I use Nightmares and Succubi for Elites, and the Thorn Whip for most of it.

For the first fight against the cannons, make walls on the left. Empty the right side. Take the cannon's first hit, get your mana bar filled and try to set up a piece of wall in front of the right cannon. Use your power. If done well, you win this in a ridiculous two turns.
Reject the two demons fight provocation.
Take the money chest and buy two Nightmares, go fight Jezebeth. Go to the bar, refuse to fight the demons and go west into the cave. Do both of the human prisoner's puzzle fights and equip the Thorn Whip. Now you can fight the demons at the bar entrance. Go in, defeat Lorhish, since he is a big one imps are a good choice to attack him, along with Succubi. He will try to avoid your attacks, so attack everything around him. A good thing to know is that his AI is a bit odd and if you have several groups of units right in front of him as he throws his firebrand, he might attack only the ones in the back and leave your forward unit in perfect shape. Useful for Succubi. Once beaten, loot the chest on the left.

Go south to buy all the Nightmares you can afford and go to Mt Neberzyias to the North. Fight only the first two demons and go to the top and through the portal. Defeat everyone, take the Nightmares and Succubi, and do the Portal fight. This one only has two rules: spam succubi and all you can get in front of the portal, and when their Succubi show up, set up some troops in front of them to take the attacks. Nothing else matters.

After the cutscene(the only one with a really funny line with the happy dead demon), go east and do all the 3 mandatory fights. Once again, quite straightforward.

Now for an explanation. Every one of Aidan's fights except Lorhish and Azexes are to be done with Nightmares. Succubi rarely help except against mages and are most of the time a bother. Yet, partly due to not experimenting enough, I have never found an effective strategy to kill off Azexes fast, or a better way to do the Portal battle. More than that, another fight will come later in the game where fighting with just Nightmares will be a...bad dream. Succubi might be a pain to level up but it's completely necessary for the boss fights.

For Azexes, equip only imps, Succubi, and the Horn you should've taken from Lorhish's bar that gives them a 5th attack. The fight's sequence is as follows: Small, side fireballs, big central fireball, wall assault. Prepare your forces in front of the place he will teleport to and you'll be fine as long as you also make some walls to take the fire wall assault. One warning: a fully-powered Succubus with the artifact can destroy his big fireball in one assault. If that happens, he will teleport right after to his next location to do the wall assault.

-Nadia's almost campaign, the Gauntlet is probably the best part in the game. This is where a lot of strange earlier decisions come in handy.

For Fiona, equip the Spider Cloak, Ghosts, and Zombies only. The Ghosts are immune to the fire explosions, so use them till you win. A pretty quick fight.

For Anwen, equip the Life Ring, Deers, Bears and Archers, no Pixies. Do not attack the Titans on the left and right. Attack the central one exclusively. Attack the rest only to make links or such. The two side Titans will kill you and the Life Ring will bring you back with 1HP. Your job is to weaken or kill the central Titan before he can finish you off after the Life Ring brought you back. Deers, Bears and Archers for attack, and then walls when he's just about to attack you. This fight can be quite luck-based and it's the other fight that I died to in my PB, due to a pretty atrocious luck.

For Godric, equip any basic team you want without Archers, take Knights and Angels. Equip either the Lion's Mane or the Angel Wing, but the Angel Wing is usually the best choice. The poison will weaken your attack but a charged Angel will heal your troops to perfect health with the Angel Wing. Once that's dealt with, it's a fast and easy fight.

The biggest cage in the universe closes in on your heroes(and their entire armies!) and you get treated to the last campaign.

-Nadia's campaign is a massive uuuuuuuuuuuugh from beginning till almost end. Her attack is pathetic, her HP bar quite huge and more than anything her foes almost always play it extremely defensively.
There is very little strategy to make out of this horrid campaign. It's the only one that takes over 1h20 mins while all the others take less than 1h5 mins. Worse, every campaign has good units or good artifacts, or both, to help. Nadia has extremely poor offense and not a single artifact worth it.

At least the explaining will be fast: Equip only Golems(the only basic unit that can actually deliver serious damage to the goal) and Mages. No Djinns, No Rakshasas, No Titans. They are either worthless(Djinns) or are given too late and cannot be leveled up enough to be useful before the end. The entirety of Nadia's campaign is to go up the tower, do all the mandatory fights with Links, Walls, Fused Mages and pray that you can actually do damage to the very defensive and gremlin-abusing enemies. Walls will be your friends against those attack-sappers.

When you get the first of Nadia's fights done, you win the Absorb Circlet. It's not a great artifact but it can come in handy, so keep it equipped unless you found better.

Once you've spent over an hour of tedious fights all the way up, you come to the smaller final Gauntlet.

-The Three Last are a bit challenging, but they each have effective strats. For Godric VS Aidan, take Knights only and the Lion's Mane, charge them up so they will take the attack from the Archdemons when at their strongest, and DO NOT attack anything before the Archdemons have attacked, you'd kill yourself. Once they've attacked, finish Aidan. In my PB I fast-killed him before the Archdemons attacked with a Fused Knight linked to two other groups of spearmen. That was a lucky hit, and the first time I ever killed him that fast.

For Aidan VS Azh Rafir, Take only Imps, Nightmares and Succubi(again, they are great boss and Champion-killers), weaken the Rakshasas but don't kill them or the Phoenix will bring them back, attack the Phoenix at will with the Succubi, and keep attacking till victory. At this point Aidan's walls should be quite strong, so don't hesitate to build tons of those and unleash them to deal over 70 damage to Azh Rafir.

Nadia VS Lord Bloodcrown has a very luck-based but powerful strategy that actually uses her power, and is a very safe strategy. With the Absorb Circlet equipped, you can get 1/4th or so of your Mana bar filled up by destroying one Superwall. Playing this fight with just Golems, doing nothing but creating walls, destroying them, recreating them while losing the least turns possible, and spamming Nadia's Lightning Storm attack, makes it an incredibly easy and fast win. You can even force yourself to not create walls and take part of a hit to fill up your mana bar faster(dangerous thing, I was extremely close to dying when I tried that in my PB!).

And that's the end.

I have a few other notes(in french) about the puzzle fights, but apart from that that's my entire route strategy, I think.

This game is terribly random and although I know that I can do better than this 5:15.50, I probably won't do it until someone beats this(quite beatable) time or finds a new strategy to make things faster.

Hello,

This is my first post on SDA forums so I'm not quite sure if I can submit a run on Clash of Heroes.

In any case, I have a (very laggy but still viewable) run of the [color="yellow"]game's Steam version in 5:15.50[/color] on my twitch channel: http://www.twitch.tv/mahboyy/c/3654759

I'm not sure it's WR but in any case, that's my current personal best, which I'm not too interested in beating until someone shows a better time for the game on this version.

I know from this thread that there's a faster time on the DS version, which I believe sports better loading times and I know for a fact has much faster animations in-game.

Whether this is a record or not, here are my strats and method for playing the run:

-I start off at Anwen's campaign by loading a save. The tutorials cannot be skipped in the Steam version and they are a very sequential(3 fights out of which only one actually has a chance of making you wait another turn, in which case I would reset), and since the DS version run skips the tutorial, I load a previous save just at the start of Anwen's campaign.

[color="red"]-Anwen's campaign[/color] is quite straightforward for the first five fights. Equip the [color="yellow"]Leaf Plate[/color] next to Findan, [color="yellow"]use a mixed team of all basic units and train your deers, only your deers[/color]. Don't equip the Druids when offered, they slow down the fights and their firepower is piss poor compared to the deers. The mix of basics is necessary for both Anwen's campaign and the Gauntlet later in the game, so they all have to be raised to level 5 as an optimal strat.
The 6th fight in Anwen's campaign is the first "aim at that one target" fight of the game, and it might be to your advantage to equip only bears for this fight as a safe strat. I go with a mixed team in my PB, and do it in 4 turns, which is quite poor.
The rest of Anwen's campaign is pretty straightforward with two exceptions. To reach level 7 in time and gain a few units their levels early, after you fought Varkas in the Elven village, take the first puzzle fight in the village, then go on your way to the Seed fight. When you cross the river, [color="yellow"]you must ABSOLUTELY take the Life Ring and not equip it[/color]. As soon as you have level 5 basic units, you can take them all out and go full Pixie, which holds the greatest offensive potential for any basics of the game. I usually only do it for the penultimate fight of Anwen at the Succubi and use only Deers and Pixies for both the Succubi fight and the Azexes boss fight.

Azexes himself is rather easy but can take a beating, so attack him with linked pixies/deers, then protect yourself either by attacking his fireballs or setting up a few units and one layer of walls in front of them. Your target must be to cut his attack just so it deals less than half your HP, so you can get your MP bar fully charged once, use your Arrow Storm attack on him, and have his second fireball wave take a little less than the other half of your HP, sending your mana up again. Repeat linked attacks on him and remember that if you followed my route, your arrows will deal exactly 25 damage to him.

[color="red"]-Godric's campaign[/color] is likely the 2nd worst in the game. The amount of aim-at-this-only-in-this-specific-order battles is just ridiculous and you can get to restart a battle at the slightest whim of the RNG. At first, equip the Swordsmen and attack with Fusions. [color="yellow"]When the archers come to you, unequip them immediately[/color]. They are a complete cancer and you will never use them in real battles. When you get the archers, go to the cave on the right and loot both chests, one of which contains the [color="yellow"]Lion's Mane[/color], the only artifact you will equip through this campaign. Go back out and up the road, enter the bar, speak to nobody and come out, do the prison gate fight with either 1x Swordsmen 2x Spearmen or 2xSwordsmen 1xSpearmen. Go to the Priestess temple and buy one Priestess which you will not equip. Go back in the bar and accept the puzzle fight from Rolly. That'll give you a free level for both Knights and Priestesses. Come out, buy all the Knights you can from the Stables on the east, and go north to do the next fight.

Once you've won, [color="yellow"]unequip every single unit and put archers everywhere[/color]. Go up and do the Archers fight. Since your own archers shoot in 2 turns, that should help you make this tedious RNG-hell fight faster. A note to remember, I'm fairly sure that it's impossible for the Archers to stay hidden behind the pillars for more than one turn. If you can time yourself right, you will be able to shoot them in-between hiding times, if need be.
Talk to the aunt, don't equip the Priestesses, [color="yellow"]reequip your own desired number of Swordsmen and Spearmen along with Knights, go east to buy one Griffin only which you won't equip[/color], enter the Arena and do the 3 fights in a row.
From the moment you enter the Arena, Godric's campaign starts being quite good, great even. The Lion's Mane used on a lucky 2 Knights fusion can finish almost every fight in one attack, so spamming Fused Knights with a link or two is almost certain victory. The rest of the campaign is completely straightforward, go to the Castle, don't equip any new artifact, go to Count Carlyle and loot his chest, you can equip the Archangels if you wish but I find it to lose time in most cases, go back to the Castle and defeat Carlyle.

Carlyle himself takes 3 turns for his small biles to attack you, so if you can launch attacks during your very first turn, do it. After that, only prepare walls and Knights to attack Carlyle himself, don't lose time with the bile. When Carlyle's baton's countdown reaches around 1, [color="yellow"]DO NOT call reinforcements[/color] even if that means you do nothing that turn. Spam Knights and Swordsmen, Fuse if you can, and he should be done quickly.

[color="red"]-Fiona's campaign[/color] is a notch harder than the first two. When you start off, do the first fights for Sir Skeleton and Markal. Go to the south, along the way you should see a money chest west of you, go take it and buy two vampires to the southeast with it. Enter the crypt([color="yellow"]WARNING[/color]: if you get attacked by a random enemy in the crypt, take the fight, do not reject it) and go towards the skeleton at the North. Talk to him twice and give him 10 as password, take the treasure. Go talk to the Pirate to the east, do his first puzzle, and you should be level 4 if you have also done the random fight. [color="yellow"]Leave the crypt and go back to Sir Skeleton to win the Spider Cloak from him.[/color] This fight can be extremely tedious and difficult depending on your own luck and his defensive stance. The best strategy is to let him attack you hard enough to fill your MP bar, and use a vampire to attack him and take your HP back. Repeat while spamming the Blood Ritual until he falls. In my PB I got exceptional luck at this fight and ended it very quickly, but it can take about 3 times that number of turns to win this.

Now that you have the Spider Cloak equipped, you are a bulldozer with wooden tracks. Your offense is tremendous but your HP is a pitiful 7. I made a big mistake during my Lady of the Crypt fight in my PB and died a stupid death because I didn't play offensively. With the SC, you should always play offensively. Never make walls. If you're about to be attacked, set up an attack in front to tank it. The Spider Cloak gives you tremendous charge power and you can abuse it a lot. You must always think offensively and even your defense should be taken care of by attacking units.

Once you have the SC, go back in the crypt, defeat the Lady(kudos if you can kill the Death Knight before he attacks, I rarely manage it), take the ghosts and go west. Enter the building, buy all the ghosts you can, go North defeat both demons and Mages. Take the chests on your right and left, and go down to buy 3 Death Knights, which you will equip instead of the Vampires, but not use.
DKs are necessary for the last 4 fights of Fiona's campaign(2 of them really, they're not that needed for the rest). They are a massive bother before that point, but you need to train their levels. If one gets in your way during the campaign, don't hesitate to kill it off, you need only one to be alive in your team to take all the XP.

From that point on, things are straightforward again. Go on with the classic route with no detours or puzzle fights, the Titan fight near Sir Skeleton, the Demons fight, Mages, and Necromancer Priests fight(each of them needs about 40 damage to fall, a good ghost or 3 groups of basic units will do the job). Buy some more Death Knights before entering Ludmilla, and fight your way up. The last fight before Ludmilla sports a big charging DK behind a massive bone wall. This is why you've had to level up your own DKs for all this time: to get through this part without taking 15 turns.

On a side note, I have been wondering if going full Zombies isn't a better strategy, but I never saw it as particularly powerful so I never experimented with it much.

Ludmilla herself is a terrible boss to do unprepared with the Spider Cloak. The perfect strategy is to have a Champion unit(in this case a DK, I used to use Bone Dragons) on the 2nd and 3rd columns from the left. [color="yellow"]It must be activated between the 2nd and 6th turn to work.[/color] Ludmilla will summon two Bone Dragons, which must be poisoned with Zombies and destroyed/defended against with Ghosts or all the charged units you can find. If the DK is perfectly placed, the left Dragon will crash into it, so you can afford to only take care of the right one. Once the Dragons are gone, Ludmilla will move to the left and take 4 turns to prepare a laser attack. With a strong DK in front of her, she can have 2/3rds of her health bar destroyed in just one attack. This placement takes a lot of luck though, so don't hesitate to retreat a lot to get a good start. If you can manage it in time, you get a very quick win. Also please know that Ludmilla is weak to poisoning by Zombies. Attacking her with a Zombie group and her Dragons usually make the fight quite easier on you.

[color="red"]-Aidan's campaign[/color] is probably the fastest along with Anwen's. Admittedly, it's the campaign I optimised the least out of all. I usually go with mixed teams 1x Hellhound 1x Horned Demon 1x Imp, but 3x HH isn't a bad strat either. I use Nightmares and Succubi for Elites, and the Thorn Whip for most of it.

[color="yellow"]For the first fight against the cannons, make walls on the left. Empty the right side.[/color] Take the cannon's first hit, get your mana bar filled and try to set up a piece of wall in front of the right cannon. Use your power. If done well, you win this in a ridiculous two turns.
[color="yellow"]Reject the two demons fight provocation.[/color]
Take the money chest and buy two Nightmares, go fight Jezebeth. Go to the bar, refuse to fight the demons and go west into the cave. Do both of the human prisoner's puzzle fights and [color="yellow"]equip the Thorn Whip[/color]. Now you can fight the demons at the bar entrance. Go in, defeat Lorhish, since he is a big one imps are a good choice to attack him, along with Succubi. He will try to avoid your attacks, so attack everything around him. A good thing to know is that his AI is a bit odd and if you have several groups of units right in front of him as he throws his firebrand, he might attack only the ones in the back and leave your forward unit in perfect shape. Useful for Succubi.[color="yellow"] Once beaten, loot the chest on the left.[/color]

Go south to buy all the Nightmares you can afford and go to Mt Neberzyias to the North. Fight only the first two demons and go to the top and through the portal. Defeat everyone, take the Nightmares and Succubi, and do the Portal fight. This one only has two rules: spam succubi and all you can get in front of the portal, and when their Succubi show up, set up some troops in front of them to take the attacks. Nothing else matters.

After the cutscene(the only one with a really funny line with the happy dead demon), go east and do all the 3 mandatory fights. Once again, quite straightforward.

Now for an explanation. Every one of Aidan's fights except Lorhish and Azexes are to be done with Nightmares. Succubi rarely help except against mages and are most of the time a bother. Yet, partly due to not experimenting enough, I have never found an effective strategy to kill off Azexes fast, or a better way to do the Portal battle. More than that, another fight will come later in the game where fighting with just Nightmares will be a...bad dream. Succubi might be a pain to level up but it's completely necessary for the boss fights.

[color="yellow"]For Azexes, equip only imps, Succubi, and the Horn[/color] you should've taken from Lorhish's bar that gives them a 5th attack. The fight's sequence is as follows: Small, side fireballs, big central fireball, wall assault. Prepare your forces in front of the place he will teleport to and you'll be fine as long as you also make some walls to take the fire wall assault. One warning: a fully-powered Succubus with the artifact can destroy his big fireball in one assault. If that happens, he will teleport right after to his next location to do the wall assault.

[color="red"]-Nadia's almost campaign, the Gauntlet[/color] is probably the best part in the game. This is where a lot of strange earlier decisions come in handy.

For Fiona, equip the Spider Cloak, Ghosts, and Zombies only. The Ghosts are immune to the fire explosions, so use them till you win. A pretty quick fight.

For Anwen, equip the Life Ring, Deers, Bears and Archers, no Pixies. Do not attack the Titans on the left and right. Attack the central one exclusively. Attack the rest only to make links or such. The two side Titans will kill you and the Life Ring will bring you back with 1HP. Your job is to weaken or kill the central Titan before he can finish you off after the Life Ring brought you back. Deers, Bears and Archers for attack, and then walls when he's just about to attack you. This fight can be quite luck-based and it's the other fight that I died to in my PB, due to a pretty atrocious luck.

For Godric, equip any basic team you want without Archers, take Knights and Angels. Equip either the Lion's Mane or the Angel Wing, but the Angel Wing is usually the best choice. The poison will weaken your attack but a charged Angel will heal your troops to perfect health with the Angel Wing. Once that's dealt with, it's a fast and easy fight.

The biggest cage in the universe closes in on your heroes(and their entire armies!) and you get treated to the last campaign.

[color="red"]-Nadia's campaign[/color] is a massive uuuuuuuuuuuugh from beginning till almost end. Her attack is pathetic, her HP bar quite huge and more than anything her foes almost always play it extremely defensively.
There is very little strategy to make out of this horrid campaign. It's the only one that takes over 1h20 mins while all the others take less than 1h5 mins. Worse, every campaign has good units or good artifacts, or both, to help. Nadia has extremely poor offense and not a single artifact worth it.

At least the explaining will be fast: Equip only Golems(the only basic unit that can actually deliver serious damage to the goal) and Mages. No Djinns, No Rakshasas, No Titans. They are either worthless(Djinns) or are given too late and cannot be leveled up enough to be useful before the end. The entirety of Nadia's campaign is to go up the tower, do all the mandatory fights with Links, Walls, Fused Mages and pray that you can actually do damage to the very defensive and gremlin-abusing enemies. Walls will be your friends against those attack-sappers.

When you get the first of Nadia's fights done, you win the [color="yellow"]Absorb Circlet[/color]. It's not a great artifact but it can come in handy, so keep it equipped unless you found better.

Once you've spent over an hour of tedious fights all the way up, you come to the smaller final Gauntlet.

[color="red"]-The Three Last[/color] are a bit challenging, but they each have effective strats. For Godric VS Aidan, take Knights only and the Lion's Mane, charge them up so they will take the attack from the Archdemons when at their strongest, and DO NOT attack anything before the Archdemons have attacked, you'd kill yourself. Once they've attacked, finish Aidan. In my PB I fast-killed him before the Archdemons attacked with a Fused Knight linked to two other groups of spearmen. That was a lucky hit, and the first time I ever killed him that fast.

For Aidan VS Azh Rafir, Take only Imps, Nightmares and Succubi(again, they are great boss and Champion-killers), weaken the Rakshasas but don't kill them or the Phoenix will bring them back, attack the Phoenix at will with the Succubi, and keep attacking till victory. At this point Aidan's walls should be quite strong, so don't hesitate to build tons of those and unleash them to deal over 70 damage to Azh Rafir.

Nadia VS Lord Bloodcrown has a very luck-based but powerful strategy that actually uses her power, and is a very safe strategy. [color="yellow"]With the Absorb Circlet equipped, you can get 1/4th or so of your Mana bar filled up by destroying one Superwall.[/color] Playing this fight with just Golems, doing nothing but creating walls, destroying them, recreating them while losing the least turns possible, and spamming Nadia's Lightning Storm attack, makes it an incredibly easy and fast win. You can even force yourself to not create walls and take part of a hit to fill up your mana bar faster(dangerous thing, I was extremely close to dying when I tried that in my PB!).

And that's the end.

I have a few other notes(in french) about the puzzle fights, but apart from that that's my entire route strategy, I think.

This game is terribly random and although I know that I can do better than this 5:15.50, I probably won't do it until someone beats this(quite beatable) time or finds a new strategy to make things faster.

mahboyy

2014-02-03 07:29:17 pm

King Lurkinian

It can't be called a speedrun since I was taking my time, but I finished the game 100% in under 13 hours, too.

jetfirexx

2014-02-11 01:59:33 pm

Gotta go fast!

That strategy sounds like a great start and I hadn't even thought about running this game until I saw this thread but 5:15:50 sounds like a decent time. I think segmenting this game in to every seperate campaign would help with countering the incredibly random nature of the game and your route is definately a great one for the Steam version. Details such as skipping the tutorial etc. would just mean that the games would have seperate categories for the DS version and the HD version (Steam, PSN and XBLA). I'll try out some of these strats when I have a chance and see if I can find any improvements

jetfirexx

2014-03-02 03:54:40 pm

Gotta go fast!

Just an idea for when you use Fiona, Its high risk but would just using the Wraith for the boss fights be a possible strategy? After all if they hit the enemy, its instant win in 5 turns if you can set one up on the first turn? The only issue is going out of your way to get them..

jetfirexx

Edit history:

jetfirexx: 2014-03-16 12:08:16 pm

2014-03-12 05:33:01 pm

Gotta go fast!

Quote from mahboyy:

Hello,

The tutorials cannot be skipped in the Steam version

I just did a practice Anwen run in prep for a stream sometime in the week (It went wrong everywhere but the Azexes fight which went amazingly) and you can skip all the tutorial battles by pressing esc and skip fight which saves a couple minutes. I also decided that esc was faster than clicking next on the text boxes but you have to be careful not to accidentally pause the game

I just beat Anwen's campaign in 56:08 starting from when New Game is clicked and ending when the note about using Findern in multiplayer comes up.
The units I used were the Deers and the Emerald Dragons along with all three units apart from the two Sir's fight where I only used archers. (This fight can take forever otherwise). I also used the Leaf Plate artifact so that being underleveled wouldn't have as much of an effect. I also didn't bother with doing a puzzle because you really don't need the levels. You are stong enough to do all the mandetory fights without any optional fights. The hardest fight in the run is probably Sir Strata because you need to be careful where you set up units. Eryu moves all the way to the right and then to the left once he reaches the edge so keep this in mind when you are setting up your units.

The other notable fights are protecting the Seed and Azexes.

For the Seed fight, I found the easiest way to keep the seed alive was to move it about when it was close to being attacked and building a lot of walls near the seed. I then Ideally am able to set up an Emerald Dragon within the first two rounds and then the fight is usually over after that 4th/5th round if you are lucky. Also ending turns is faster than setting up units you don't need

For Azexes, I managed in a different run to get a 5 round Azexes fight that was just unbelievable. However I doubt I will ever get it again. If I'm lucky, I'll have an emerald dragon that I can set up for the area he will move to after he attacks in round 2 and then use mainly deers to get his health down in the meantime. My usual time for Azexes is that I usually kill him on his third attack phase when he is attacking from in front of him.

I also agree that getting the life ring is crucial for the gauntlet later on but the life ring and leaf plates are the only artifacts that you need to actually get. You also have to be careful not to run out of Special Units because getting more is time consuming and expensive. Every time that a Special unit is killed by an enemy, the amount you have will go down so you do need to look after them.

[quote="mahboyy"]Hello,

The tutorials cannot be skipped in the Steam version[/quote]
I just did a practice Anwen run in prep for a stream sometime in the week (It went wrong everywhere but the Azexes fight which went amazingly) and you can skip all the tutorial battles by pressing esc and skip fight which saves a couple minutes. I also decided that esc was faster than clicking next on the text boxes but you have to be careful not to accidentally pause the game

I just beat Anwen's campaign in 56:08 starting from when New Game is clicked and ending when the note about using Findern in multiplayer comes up. 
The units I used were the Deers and the Emerald Dragons along with all three units apart from the two Sir's fight where I only used archers. (This fight can take forever otherwise). I also used the Leaf Plate artifact so that being underleveled wouldn't have as much of an effect. I also didn't bother with doing a puzzle because you really don't need the levels. You are stong enough to do all the mandetory fights without any optional fights. The hardest fight in the run is probably Sir Strata because you need to be careful where you set up units. Eryu moves all the way to the right and then to the left once he reaches the edge so keep this in mind when you are setting up your units.

The other notable fights are protecting the Seed and Azexes.

For the Seed fight, I found the easiest way to keep the seed alive was to move it about when it was close to being attacked and building a lot of walls near the seed. I then Ideally am able to set up an Emerald Dragon within the first two rounds and then the fight is usually over after that 4th/5th round if you are lucky. Also ending turns is faster than setting up units you don't need

For Azexes, I managed in a different run to get a 5 round Azexes fight that was just unbelievable. However I doubt I will ever get it again. If I'm lucky, I'll have an emerald dragon that I can set up for the area he will move to after he attacks in round 2 and then use mainly deers to get his health down in the meantime. My usual time for Azexes is that I usually kill him on his third attack phase when he is attacking from in front of him.

I also agree that getting the life ring is crucial for the gauntlet later on but the life ring and leaf plates are the only artifacts that you need to actually get. You also have to be careful not to run out of Special Units because getting more is time consuming and expensive. Every time that a Special unit is killed by an enemy, the amount you have will go down so you do need to look after them.

mahboyy

2014-03-17 04:57:42 am

King Lurkinian

@Jetfirexx

Well I considered Wraiths for Ludmilla, but IIRC:
-You need to do an optional fight to open the cave that contains the Wraith building.
-Almost every fight on the rise to Ludmilla have strong walls or Death Knights, so your Wraiths may not pass
-If you time yourself correctly, which is difficult, you can get a level 3 Death Knight to attack Ludmilla, which can amount to around 110 damage, effectively winning the fight along with a few base units attack or Fiona's power.

So I'd say Wraith is a decent strategy considering their speed, especially against the fight right before Ludmilla which is insanely long and drawn out because of DK+Walls, but I still think Death Knights is the better option here.

Oh damn. I missed that part about skipping the tutorials. :/

For Anwen's I used Dragons also but let go because level 5 Pixies and Deers do the job perfectly fine, and the time needed to get Dragons to a measly level 3 by the campaign's end is wasted.
The only puzzle I do at Anwen's is meant to get deers one level higher and Anwen one level higher for the first Demon fight around the end.

One strategy change I must talk about. I didn't do any more runs, but I did try a new strategy for Aidan. The idea is to follow my old strategy all the way to Mt Neberzyias. When you go up Mt Neberzyias, you'll do the first fight you find, but not go to the Portal. Instead, pick up the Pit Fiends, and right up northeast on a tiny platform there is a chest: that's the Pit Master's Tail.

That artifact means that the Pit Fiends take only 4 turns to charge, same as Nightmares or Succubi. The difference is that with links(particularly Hellhounds) and a little luck, these Pit Fiends can combine the powers from both the Succubi and the Nightmares, with fast and powerful attacks to the goal, and massive destruction, along with a flame trail on whatever they kill.

It is a difficult strategy to use because it means the Portal fight has to be played defensively, you have to let the Archdemon attack you because you probably won't be able to attack first with a PF while it would be easier with a Succubus, and attacking second means you'd be cluttering your space in front of the Portal with a weakened Pit Fiend that took the attack and doesn't have any strength left.

The Azexes fight would also have to have its strategy and times reset, but I don't think it'd be impossible. Just harder.

Same with the final gauntlet fight against Azh Rafir, weakning the Rakshasas and Phoenix with Pit Fiends will be very hard if possible at all, so I'd suggest going with level 3 succubi and Pit fiends for this fight(never tried that fight with PFs yet).

It is a hard strat but with luck, the Pit Fiends power is definitely worth it, they are NightmaresxSuccubi in terms of power.

@Jetfirexx

Well I considered Wraiths for Ludmilla, but IIRC:
-You need to do an optional fight to open the cave that contains the Wraith building.
-Almost every fight on the rise to Ludmilla have strong walls or Death Knights, so your Wraiths may not pass
-If you time yourself correctly, which is difficult, you can get a level 3 Death Knight to attack Ludmilla, which can amount to around 110 damage, effectively winning the fight along with a few base units attack or Fiona's power.

So I'd say Wraith is a decent strategy considering their speed, especially against the fight right before Ludmilla which is insanely long and drawn out because of DK+Walls, but I still think Death Knights is the better option here.

Oh damn. I missed that part about skipping the tutorials. :/

For Anwen's I used Dragons also but let go because level 5 Pixies and Deers do the job perfectly fine, and the time needed to get Dragons to a measly level 3 by the campaign's end is wasted.
The only puzzle I do at Anwen's is meant to get deers one level higher and Anwen one level higher for the first Demon fight around the end.

[color="red"]One strategy change[/color] I must talk about. I didn't do any more runs, but I did try a new strategy for Aidan. The idea is to follow my old strategy all the way to Mt Neberzyias. When you go up Mt Neberzyias, you'll do the first fight you find, but not go to the Portal. Instead, pick up the Pit Fiends, and right up northeast on a tiny platform there is a chest: that's the Pit Master's Tail.

That artifact means that the Pit Fiends take only 4 turns to charge, same as Nightmares or Succubi. The difference is that with links(particularly Hellhounds) and a little luck, these Pit Fiends can combine the powers from both the Succubi and the Nightmares, with fast and powerful attacks to the goal, and massive destruction, along with a flame trail on whatever they kill.

It is a difficult strategy to use because it means the Portal fight has to be played defensively, you have to let the Archdemon attack you because you probably won't be able to attack first with a PF while it would be easier with a Succubus, and attacking second means you'd be cluttering your space in front of the Portal with a weakened Pit Fiend that took the attack and doesn't have any strength left.

The Azexes fight would also have to have its strategy and times reset, but I don't think it'd be impossible. Just harder.

Same with the final gauntlet fight against Azh Rafir, weakning the Rakshasas and Phoenix with Pit Fiends will be very hard if possible at all, so I'd suggest going with level 3 succubi and Pit fiends for this fight(never tried that fight with PFs yet).

It is a hard strat but with luck, the Pit Fiends power is definitely worth it, they are NightmaresxSuccubi in terms of power.

jetfirexx

2014-03-17 05:48:38 am

Gotta go fast!

I think I'm going to need to see what times I get using the Death Knights and using the Wraiths and just see both which is faster and which is more consistant since both are highly luck based in different ways.

The reason I used Dragons with Anwen is that in the earlier fights from when you get the Emerald Dragons, you tend to win in the same amount of rounds whether you get Deers or a Dragon. I also find the Dragons are powerful enough by the time you finish the campaign if you use them in every fight you have that their level doesn't matter. Using the Dragons also saves you time because you don't need the extra level that the puzzle gives you.

I hadn't thought about doing that with the Pit Fiends and Aiden though. I'll definately need to try it out but Aiden can work well defensivly with a little luck and that hopefully will be faster but again I'll need to test it just to see if it saves any time. So much relies on luck anyways that needing a little more should still be fine.

PlainSlayer96

2014-07-28 08:21:14 pm

Hey guys;

I've been planning a heavily segmented run of the Steam version of this game for a while (heavily as in segmenting about every two fights). I've found a lot of the same things that both of you have; but I think segmentation will allow for some different strategies.

-I've recently decided to use Hunters all the way through Anwen's campaign, and Archers for the whole Godric campaign. It's true that they have no power, but with more resets, I can finish the Tree Cutters, the Sleeping Stag Inn lock, the Prison Gate, and the Archer battle a turn sooner, which will save roughly 60-75 seconds total. Also, Elite Units end most of the fights in those campaigns by themselves when fused (Anwen because of Arrow Storm, Godric because of Lion's Mane), and even when a link or two is necessary, the power loss shouldn't matter. These units even give you an extra turn to set up said links!

-I currently plan to use Succubi all the way through Aidan's campaign. The time loss on the battle cutscenes will add up, I'm sure, but with the Burning Horn, they do ridiculous damage to Lorhish, the Portal, and Azexes (a doubled one does about 128 damage to Azexes by itself, so that plus links and a Fiery Brimstone could kill before he even teleports). Also, it will require some insane fusion/linking, but I think it's possible to attack through the first Pit Fiend and deal lethal to the portal in the minimum 4 turns. Finally, as stated, Azh Rafir is a lot easier with them as opposed to Pit Fiends, because they can attack through the gaps.

-I'm still deciding on a couple of things in Fiona's campaign; I haven't attempted to kill the Death Knight before it attacks, but I can see that with the Spider Cloak, that would be the quickest way to win that fight. I'm also having the same debate about whether to get the Wraiths... I know that if I could survive both dragons with the Spider Cloak equipped, the two extra turns her fight would take would be faster than the 3-minute optional fight to get the Wraiths. I don't think Death Knights are needed for the last few fights; Skeletons do 16 with the Spider Cloak, and with a lot of units on the board, I've seen Blood Ritual hit 44 power. The final fight before Ludmilla would not be well suited for this, but fused Ghosts could definitely still pull it off.

-I'm also trying to figure out what the optimal Lord Bloodcrown strategy is... My best guess is a fused Rakshasa and three good Lightning Strikes; one from the Battle Wand at the beginning, one from his hand attacks hitting, and one from the actual Rakshasa hitting. Trying just the Absorb Circlet and basic units, I'd need five good Lightning Strikes, and it would be next to impossible to get that faster than 5 turns.

Hey guys;

I've been planning a heavily segmented run of the Steam version of this game for a while (heavily as in segmenting about every two fights). I've found a lot of the same things that both of you have; but I think segmentation will allow for some different strategies.

-I've recently decided to use Hunters all the way through Anwen's campaign, and Archers for the whole Godric campaign. It's true that they have no power, but with more resets, I can finish the Tree Cutters, the Sleeping Stag Inn lock, the Prison Gate, and the Archer battle a turn sooner, which will save roughly 60-75 seconds total. Also, Elite Units end most of the fights in those campaigns by themselves when fused (Anwen because of Arrow Storm, Godric because of Lion's Mane), and even when a link or two is necessary, the power loss shouldn't matter. These units even give you an extra turn to set up said links!

-I currently plan to use Succubi all the way through Aidan's campaign. The time loss on the battle cutscenes will add up, I'm sure, but with the Burning Horn, they do ridiculous damage to Lorhish, the Portal, and Azexes (a doubled one does about 128 damage to Azexes by itself, so that plus links and a Fiery Brimstone could kill before he even teleports). Also, it will require some insane fusion/linking, but I think it's possible to attack through the first Pit Fiend and deal lethal to the portal in the minimum 4 turns. Finally, as stated, Azh Rafir is a lot easier with them as opposed to Pit Fiends, because they can attack through the gaps.

-I'm still deciding on a couple of things in Fiona's campaign; I haven't attempted to kill the Death Knight before it attacks, but I can see that with the Spider Cloak,  that would be the quickest way to win that fight. I'm also having the same debate about whether to get the Wraiths... I know that if I could survive both dragons with the Spider Cloak equipped, the two extra turns her fight would take would be faster than the 3-minute optional fight to get the Wraiths. I don't think Death Knights are needed for the last few fights; Skeletons do 16 with the Spider Cloak, and with a lot of units on the board, I've seen Blood Ritual hit 44 power. The final fight before Ludmilla would not be well suited for this, but fused Ghosts could definitely still pull it off.

-I'm also trying to figure out what the optimal Lord Bloodcrown strategy is... My best guess is a fused Rakshasa and three good Lightning Strikes; one from the Battle Wand at the beginning, one from his hand attacks hitting, and one from the actual Rakshasa hitting. Trying just the Absorb Circlet and basic units, I'd need five good Lightning Strikes, and it would be next to impossible to get that faster than 5 turns.