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Update 1: Level 1
Welcome to the first mostly gameplay update for Heroes of Might and Magic 2, the succession wars. I say mostly, because just to be certain I want to run through the most basic things everyone needs to know first. If you've already played a heroes game, or read through my previous LP, you can skip it and if you pass GO collect 20.000 gold.
This is the primary screen, the adventure screen. You see my pristine white castle, a castle worthy of the true king, with in the center a bearded lady. She's proudly waving her banner in the name of not quite king yet Roland. All that starry black stuff is fog of war, It's functions include aggravating the player and being ignored by the AI. It will disappear and remain permanently gone as we explore. A small blessing since I hate the fog of war.
At the top right is the mini map showing everything we’ve discovered thus far.
Below the mini map you have two columns, one for my heroes and one for my castles. It currently shows the all important 1 for both. If both are empty I will have lost and if one of the two is empty I will panic.
Below that some buttons. The helmeted guy allows me to quick select the next hero with movement points, the darkened horse allows me to set a unit to continue a preset journey. The castle provides that kingdom overview.
There’s not much to see here yet. Thanks Archibald.
The button next to the kingdown overview is to cast ADVENTURE spells! Spells are divided into two types, combat and adventure spells. Combat spells are, surprisingly, used in combat whereas adventure spells can only be used on the adventure map.
The hourglass ends my turn, the flag brings up a menu with some options. Here we immediately find some of the many many improvements compared to Heroes1. In Heroes1 the spells had to be cast via the flag icon. That’s one click less! I can easily shave seconds off of my playtime with this baby.
That weird rectangular thing is a disc, in ancient times people used it to save things. This being a medieval fantasy setting using this icon to save seems very appropriate. I applaud the developers for such minor touches in the name of immersion. 
The computer is the settings screen where I can do such wonderful things like set the horse movement speed to 300mph, turn off the music (No one but Barbarian would do that!) and change the border to the evil version. I’ll probably do that when I feel like confusing you guys.
Below the buttons it currently shows my army. But it can show one of three things, including a short kingdom overview and the day of the week.
On the adventure screen, you can currently can see some yellow stuff on the ground, that’s not pyrite, that’s REAL gold. Those two stacks together are probably close to what Roland sent me, the cheap bastard.
"You're most welcome."
The heroes games (except 6) run on several resources.
Gold which is used for everything and used by everyone.
1: The so called common resources: Wood and Ore. Both are used for building dwellings.
2: The rare resources: Crystal, Gems, Mercury and Sulfur. These are used for some of the special buildings and to recruit the strongest creatures.
Although all towns need all resources to build everything, all towns also have rare a resource associated with them, meaning you need it to get to their best units.
Youtube link to music
Welcome to Corackston. Corackston gets it's name from Corak, the guardian who was a major player in the Might and Magic series up to and including Xeen where he dies killing his nemesis.
This screen is the second most important screen. I call it the castle screen. It's purpose is giving us a nice overview of our main castle.
This is a Wizards castle, one of the two new factions added compared to Heroes 1. It’s currently fairly empty as only one dwelling was created, the Halfling habitat. In the first Heroes game these screens were full of tiny animations, making them fun and lively to look at. This time around there are less animations. The flags wave and some lights shine and flicker, but no longer are there units in front of the dwelling chilling. I'll miss them, however in it's place is a much prettier painting sort of art style.
Here we have our selection of buildings and heroes for hire.
The top 6 buildings, the Orchard and the Library are unique to the Wizard faction. The other buildings are available for all factions except the Necromancer. The dead don’t like to party so they don’t get a tavern.
Finally, the hero screen. Here we can see Dawn the Wizard,
“Gimme a little kiss!”
And yes, she is represented by an old bearded guy on a horse on the adventure map.
Starting from the top and going left to right are her skills. Attack and defense skill are added to the creatures statistics boosting their normal stats. Spell power determines the duration or the power of combat spells whereas knowledge determines the spell points we have available to us.
It’s a complicated formula, you have to take the knowledge and multiply it by 10. So Dawn currently has 232 20 spell points.
Next to the knowledge we have the golden bird depicting morale. It’s currently good since I only have wizard troops, which adds a +1 to morale. Good morale gives us a chance to get another turn in combat.There are many different morale modifiers.
Next to that is luck. It’s currently neutral. Good luck allows us to occasionally do additional damage on an attack. Like morale, there are plenty of opportunities to influence this.
Below those two we have a simple tactics toggle allowing us to set our units for grouped or spread out.
Below that our experience points, which is currently a disappointing 43. As we level, we gain more points on our skills.
The open book next to that are our spell points.
Our army is currently composed of an impressive force of 8 halflings and 4 boars.
Below our army are our skills. Gone is the innate faction bonus system from Heroes1. In its place is an actual skill system. The bonuses from Heroes 1 however are replicated by certain skills.
Dawn being a wizard starts with advanced wisdom allowing her to already learn fourth level spells. Without wisdom you can only learn up to the second level of spells.
Below the skills we find the artifacts. Like the first heroes, there are no appointed slots so once again we can wear all the boots at the same time. I’ll be sure to try that when I get my hands on them. The only “artifact” we currently have is our spell book. All magic heroes start with a spell book, all might classes can buy them for 500 gold pieces at a mage guild.
Our spell book currently only has stone skin, a spell all wizards start with.
Stone skin: costs 3 spell points to cast and adds a flat +3 to the creatures defense. It's very useful especially in early game to get your units to take hits better. Back in Heroes1 this spell was called protection and instead of a fashionable stone helmet had a steel helmet as an icon. The steel helmet is still around, but now used for the upgraded version of this spell.
That was a lot of talking, but everyone is almost on the same page now. So how about we get this party started. Anything that hasn’t been covered will be covered as they become relevant.
Go
Whatever you say boss.
The fool let us start with 2.000 extra gold and having played Heroes1 I know just what to do with it.
Heroes1 tavern posted:
To the tavern!
We’re not spending it on alcohol this time around.
Okay, so I didn’t really build a tavern first. That would be stupid. I built a pen allowing me to quit LPing and start a new career as a pig farmer. I'll start by recruiting the boars that live there. Dawn also buys all Halflings currently available and off we go!
She picked up some gems and is on her way. I immediately spot a saw mill, which she will flag next turn.
I’ll also take this time to point to one of the greatest innovations between this and Heroes1. Look at my castle in the table. See that little x in the top right corner? It shows me that I’ve already built something today. 
This wasn’t available in Heroes1 which caused me to get stuck in the “I know I already built something, but I’d better check to be certain” loops. Well no more! 
I buy a second hero. The blue guy we saw first was a wizard, but I’m buying Fineous, the not-Kelzen.
He’s a barbarian, featuring impressive attack stats and advanced pathfinding.
Let's talk about pathfinding. There are different types of terrain the heroes can traverse. Some of which add movement penalties to the heroes movement. For example, desert doubles the movement points needed for each step. For a comprehensive overview look at the table below.
Now not-Kelzen here has advanced pathfinding, that allows him to negate all penalties, except those hefty desert and swamp penalties. You need expert for that.
Needless to say, pathfinding makes him very useful for scouting, provided I run into rough terrain at some point.
Pathfinding was also the Barbarian faction innate bonus in Heroes1, except there it allowed them to complete ignore all terrain penalties. Expert pathfinding still does that.
His army currently has Goblins and Orcs. Orcs are very slow archers and he will let them stay behind in the castle for now. Movement is determined partially by the slowest unit in the army. The goblins have an average speed. Leaving behind the slow orcs allows him to cover more terrain and gives me a fearsome garrison.
Day 2
It’s not much, but you can see that not-Kelzen can already move slightly further than Dawn can. I'm calling him not-Kelzen since Kelzen was a hero in Heroes1 that looked exactly the same. I used him to great effect on the penultimate map. I have no idea why they changed his name, even weirder is that the Might and Magic wiki even has a last name for the guy (Hogworth) that I can't verify anywhere.
There was a chest in front of the sawmill. Dawn picks it up and gets to choose either gold or experience. I’m keeping that gold. Who in the right mind would give it to the peasants, what are they going to do with it? Die?
She flags the sawmill, which from this point on will provide us with a daily two pieces of lumber. This is basically the difference between rare and common resources. Common resources give two pieces, whereas rare resource generators will only provide one piece each day.
Moving on, she spots more gold and some Halflings guarding an ore mine.
Fineous the not-Kelzen meanwhile heads to the west. He already picked up the gold stacks that were near the castle.
I build a cliff nest. Also note that the spot Fineous the not-Kelzen used to have was refilled with some form of hideous beast. He’s a necromancer, but who in the right mind would want to work with someone who looks like that? Go join Archibald you ugly thing! 
I hire Flint and he gets some Rocs. He’s going to bring his units to Dawn. The rocs will allow her to shut the Halflings down easily and possibly bully them into joining us.
I also have no idea what they grey thing is in front of the cliff nest. It looks like some type of bug. It's been bugging me ever since I first played Heroes2.
He can’t reach her yet. As he moves though I notice that weird hut on birdlegs. It’s a witches hut. It teaches a random skill for free. I’ll have to sacrifice someone to check out what she learns before I send Dawn there. I don’t want to get stuck with some useless skill.
Day 3
Flint moves first and...
I think these two have some chemistry between them.
Anyway Flint will keep a single boar. Boars are very fast units, allowing him to do some really good scouting. Dawn will split the Rocs into three groups of one. Rocs are pretty sturdy, they can easily block those Halflings. Splitting stacks is something that was introduced in Heroes2 as well and it’s very welcome.
Unless you have a certain spell or artifact, the only indication you get of army size is what you see here. There are lots of Halflings here. This can mean anything between 20 and 49.
Below the other sizes.
quote:
Few 1-4
Several 5-9
Pack 10-19
Lots 20-49
Horde 50-99
Throng 100-249
Swarm 250-499
Zounds 500-999
Legion 1000+
Youtube link to music
You look different Dawn, is that new scepter? I do like the hairdo on your horse.
Boars get the first attack. They’re the fastest unit currently on the field with a speed rating of very fast. Speeds come in 6 increments. Very slow, slow, average, fast, very fast and ultra fast. Only two creatures have a speed of ultra fast.
Boars are the level2 wizard unit, they cost 150 gold to recruit and…I don’t really like them. There’s nothing interesting about them.
Also note the hitpoints left header. It’s great and another improvement from Heroes1 where I had to keep guessing how many hits something could take.
After the Boars the Rocs get their turn. Go on, eat their eyes!
Rocs cost 400 gold and are the level 4 wizard unit. They’re a really solid unit. They’re the only flying unit the wizard has, which already makes them very valuable. But they also have solid stats and a nice HP pool. They don’t tend to live very long though, being a favorite AI target and being the only flying unit means that they’re usually deep within enemy ranks. They’re a bit sluggish having only average speed and no upgrade available.
So by now the plan should be obvious. Halflings are ranged units. Ranged units get a penalty when they’re forced into melee and my rocs can easily eat the puny damage that the Halflings can muster. So I block all of them and slaughter them at my leisure.
Speaking of Halflings
Halflings are the wizard level1 unit. They cost 50 gold, which is actually fairly expensive for what they bring to the table. Being ranged at least is valuable especially in the early game, but their slow speed and low HP doesn’t do them any favors. They do like to be blessed and with their high growth they can still do an impressive amount of damage for a level 1 unit…you know if you can keep them alive. All in all though, they're probably one of the worst of the level 1 units.
Now time for the cleanup.
Victory song
Victory!
Ore mine get!
Fineous the not-Kelzen scouts the west side and discovers that rogues block the way, so he heads back. The well he is standing next to is a magic well. It refills your spell points back to maximum.
With the army underway I decide to finally build a statue. A statue provides the town with an extra 250 in gold each day. According to Morglin in Heroes1, the units that you buy actually wander out of the forest and go live in the dwellings that you make for no real reason. I guess that means that statues are golds natural habitat. I wish I could do sculpting.
It’s a nice looking statue isn’t it?
"Worthy of the true king!"
Day 4
Those dwarves are guarding a very useful building. They're probably working for Archibald, so let’s take it from them.
I did two things. One is that I recombined the roc stacks into a single mighty boulder roc. Dwarves take ages to get across, but are pretty sturdy so having the roc hit harder was preferable. Meanwhile I also elected to try out the grouped setting for no real reason, which is why everyone is huddled together.
Note that there are battle dwarves in this group. They are the upgraded version of the dwarf.
I’m going to wait this round out. See how well my Halflings will do.
I also turned on the HUD, providing more insight into my units and the enemy units.
They killed two dwarves.
The dwarves try to dodge, but fail and die. Dodging doesn’t exist in this game you cheater!
I think it’s about time everyone starts attacking.
The Halflings kill the lower dwarf stack and the top dwarf stack commits suicide on my rocs.
Victory!
So about that building. You may have noticed that it looks like Stonehenge. It’s a weird choice considering the sorceress faction uses Stonehenge to recruit druids. What this Stonehenge does is give you a free +1 to spell power. Very welcome indeed and all my heroes will probably visit it at some point.
Attack the zombies!
These things must be brain dead. Normally I would readily accept, but zombies smell bad, aren’t very good units in general and will add a negative to my morale. In fact any undead will add a negative morale modifier.
Wandering stacks can do a number of things. They can flee, they can offer to join for free, they can fight you or, if you have diplomacy, they will offer to join you for money.
Fact that they offer to join means that I should be able to kill them easily, so let’s do that instead.
Even Dawn wouldn't think of kissing these things. She's desperate, not insane.
I should probably reshuffle my army again at some point. This is less than ideal. There are plenty of obstacles, so I don’t expect any zombies to reach the other side unless the Halflings run out of rocks.
I imagine that they taste horrible. I wonder if rocs are scavengers or hunters.
My Halfling knocks them all down!
That was certainly an experience.
Fineous the not-Kelzen isn’t finding anything interesting at the moment.
Neither is Flint.
Back home a Foundry is built, letting me recruit golems. Maybe I'll buy some at some point. They're not bad, just slow.
Day 5
I too kiss random rocks. Kissing this rock gives you a +1 to your luck stat.
Fineous the not-Kelzen found a campfire and a gem mine. This is great since gems are the wizards special resource.
Flint levels up at the gazebo, where some old fart learns you some new tricks.
Somehow this can apparently learn him how to be luckier in life. Is this some kind of scam?
Every faction gets a random two skills to choose from upon level up, but not every faction has the same chance of getting every skill. In fact, the necromance skill can only be learned by necromancers and warlocks. See below for an overview as presented in the manual.
The wizard wishes it could learn archery easier and knights are smarter than barbarians...if only just.
One of the other best improvements compared to Heroes1. A simple sign telling me if someone has visited a spot already. Fact that you're seeing this already should tell you how often I try to see if someone already visited something. 
Back home a mage guild is built. This is the last requirement for me to get magi in my army. Let’s check out the spell selection.
Not a bad haul for a first level.
Dispell: Removes all spells on a creature, both positive and negative. It costs a fairly expensive 5 spell points to cast. You can guess how useful this can be.
Slow: Costs a measly 3 spell points to halve an enemy stacks speed. This is great. The duration in rounds is your spell power. Also important to note, slow "grounds" flying units. Instead of their usual ability to fly anywhere, they are forced to move the actual hexes that their new speed should allow.
View mines: For a single spell point you can check out all mines on the map. The map itself actually remains dark. This can still be pretty useful since castles are usually built near sawmills and ore mines. So with a good guess you can fairly quickly locate the enemies.
Day 6
So this is pretty lucky. A chest also has a minor chance of having an artifact and Dawn just found a medal that increases morale. Or maybe this is a set piece, either way I feel good.
We slowly creep to the top. She’ll have to turn back at some point to get some extra units.
That little building is a trading post. Anything you don’t need can be traded there for a different resource or gold at the exchange rate equal to that of three castle built markets.
I bought an ivory tower, technically I can recruit magi now. However I will hold off until I can upgrade the building.
Next turn I buy a well since the week is almost over.
Day 7
The white building is a temple. In it you can pray and gain a +2 to morale.
Fineous the not-Kelzen also visited the mushrooms. Once a week you can find a leprechaun there who will either give you a small sum of money or some gems.
Day 8
link
A brand new week, the week of the badger.
I need her to learn spells, so I’m not using Flint as a mule for now.
The leprechaun has a terrible memory, I just caught him yesterday and now he’s back. He's probably working for Archibald, let’s take his money.
Yay, just what I needed, more cash! See you next week!
Back home I build a library. The library is a Wizard only building that adds an extra spell on each level of the mage guild. I just checked and I received bless.
Bless: Bless costs 3 spell points and lasts your spell power in rounds. Any creature that is blessed always deals it’s maximum damage. You may have noticed that all creatures have a range in damage, like how the Halflings have 1-3. Normally the actual damage is based on the size of the stack. Bless ensures that the hit will always be the 3.
Day 9
We have Flint quickly gather up the extra cash and then we’re ready for Dawn.
New to Heroes2 is the ability to upgrade certain creatures. This is generally a very worthwhile thing to do since it usually fixes on the of the biggest problems the creature. In this case, it doesn’t really fix anything, it just makes the Magi even better. If you don’t upgrade before buying the units you can still upgrade the units, but you have to pay extra. How much extra? Well, double the difference. Let's pretend I bought a mage for 600, and let's not pretend that an archmage costs 700. Upgrading him would cost me 200. The only units the wizards can upgrade are the golems, the giants and the magi. Upgrading giants will cost you an arm and a leg as I'll show in due time.
Dawn heads off to free the witches hut from the zombies. I don't care who they work for, they're zombies.
Day 10
Again with the zombies. Alright Dawn, let’s give our new units a test drive.
Archmages are great, how great? Only the titans are better ranged attackers. They are the upgraded level 5 wizard unit and cost a fairly expensive 700 gold coins.
They are very fast, hit hard and have a lot of specialties. They have a 20% change of dispelling spells on their target and they don’t have a penalty for hand to hand combat. A good thing too since they’re not exactly sturdy having only 35 hitpoints. For comparison, the roc has 40 and the steel golem, a third level creature, also has 35.
You're probably wondering what the upgrade did for them?
A minor boost in offense, defense and HP. The more important thing however is the speed boost. Very fast allows them to out speed 15 extra units compared to their previous tier and this includes a fair amount of flyers.
Compared to other shooters they now tie in speed to the great druids and the titans, however their damage output and HP does put them beyond the great druids. While they can't beat war trolls in a one on one battle, they are the better shooter thanks to speed and damage.
They also shoot laser beams!
Rocs fall everybody dies.
Victory! Now get over here Flint and take one for the team.
Great, Dawn levels up and gains spell power +1. She gets to decide between ballistics, which gives your catapult extra damage or on a higher level extra shots and damage, or mysticism which boosts the mana recovery rate. Despite the fact that the wizards are a magic people, I’ll pick ballistics. Walls add a penalty to our shooting ability. That is if they’re still standing. The map isn’t that big and I’ve seen plenty of wells already so I don’t expect any difficulties with my spell points.
Just a moment.
Day 11
Good thing I had Flint check it out first. This skill provides bonus movement when on a boat. This map doesn’t have any boats so it would’ve been useless. The navigation skill used to be the sorceress faction innate bonus.
Dawn quickly passes off her slow units to Flint so she can quickly visit the gazebo for a free level. Afterwards she’s going to free up some mines.
I guess this means that the enemies can only come from the northwest and west. That’s good to know.
I have Flint cast view mines. To check out the area. There is a gold mine nearby. Oddly, the J mine denotes gems. Either to ensure that you don't confuse it with gold mines or the developers thought they were jewels. Purely based on location I feel that I should probably focus on orange first.
This is good enough for today. I talked a lot, I have scouted my area and built up my castle a bunch. Next update I’ll try and find orange so we can make orange juice.