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Update 3
Last time I wanted to take the enemy castle, but was too scared to go through with it after the enemy hero dropped off some zombies. I got better.
Day 32
Where was I…oh yes.
That rock isn’t destroying the top part, just damaging it. However thanks to the ballistics skill a second shot follows and destroys it giving the Archmages clear shot of the royal mummies.
But first a lightning bolt on the mutant zombies. Why? Because I don’t feel like walking all the way over. The vampires can come to us on their own power.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
That was easy.
Well, Dawn is the primary hero, so scouting isn’t all that bad of a choice.
Welcome to Willow, one of the necromancer homes. It’s fairly well built and even better, I can upgrade the mansion and buy some vampire lords before taking out the hero parked in front.
Thanks to the medal I found earlier this only drops my morale back to neutral.
Wait a minute I can recognize an enemy horse ass any day of the week. Look closely and you too can spot another enemy hero near the left edge.
That’s quite a lot of skeletons you have there, would be a shame if they were to suddenly die again.
A quick lightning bolt on the mummies to kill four of them.
They blind my rocs and I shoot their skeletons knocking them down from 60 to 19.
My pigs easily best their pigs from behind.
I don’t think I ever noticed before, but apparently the vampire lords eyes turn red when they attack. They’re yellowish otherwise. I love little details like that.
One vampire lord died to the skeletons, who hit really hard for a level 1 unit. Fortunately, this isn’t Heroes3 and the vampire sucks enough blood from the skeletons to rise back from the dead. That makes sense?
I forgot to show off the new spells in my new town. So here’s that.
The only ones we haven’t seen yet are Cure and Death ripple.
Cure: For 6 spell points you can remove all negative spells from a unit of choice and heal their HP for 5 times your spell power. This is probably going to keep my giant alive in the long run.
Death ripple: For 6 spell points you inflict 5 times you spell power in damage to all non-undead creatures on the field. I hope PC Snob will show it off, because it has a simple spell animation that I like. As things currently stand Fineous is going to get the Necromancer units and this spell is pretty useless on him. It’s like a really tiny Armageddon…an armaged if you will.
Anyway, I cast another lightning bolt on the mummies.
And with the archmages shooting them again they unravel leaving nothing behind but a bad smell.
The pigs kill the Halflings and victory is mine!
What? 
I think I can use that luck now. 
That’s a cursed artifact. Back and slightly more plentiful than ever compared to the first game are the cursed artifacts. There are three artifacts that provide a permanent negative your hero. In this case, this artifact costs me 250 in gold each turn. I want to get rid of it ASAP, but currently have no means to do so. Artifacts can’t be dropped, so all you can do is hire a hero and kill it.
Of course I’m short. He’s going to reclaim that castle again.
And of course Zam runs around with sprites, because what else goes better with the undead.
It kinda looks like a defense? 
I split them up, hoping that it will take at least two castings of lightning bolt to kill them.
Flints slowly comes closer to claim some mines.
And here he comes.
Also, please join the suspense with some enemy turn music.
Enemy turn music.
Please miss. You wasting time is all part of my plan.
The catapult missed. He cast stone skin on his zombies making them nice and sturdy, but without a way in it’s going to be a war of attrition.
PC Snob already mentioned the Captain, here are his stats again. He knows all spells in the spell book, but with his horrible mana pool he’s not casting too many spells. I like the idea of the captain, but they’re just a little too limited to be worth it.
Disruption ray undoes the stone stone and we skip our turn.
This is what a miss looks like.
It’s no lightning bolt, it’s the next best thing. The enemy knows cold ray. Considering that there isn’t a lightning bolt in the castle that leads me to conclude that the shrine I spotted above the enemy hero teaches it. I’ll visit it at a later date.
The AI tired of my games and thus a second casting of cold ray kills the last zombie.
Well, that was to be expected.
Day 33
Time reclaim what is right fully mine. Note the shrine at the top, that’s the one that will teach me cold ray.
I still have terrible luck with sieges as even with ballistics I still need two shots to kill one wall.
Look at that defending army. However will I manage?
You can also see my cursor in the screenshots. Thanks to the Might and Magic Humble Bundle I can now play Heroes2 on multiple computers without touching my disc. Unfortunately, I only noticed later on that I forgot to turn off the mouse cursor in my screenshots on my laptop. I usually do this on my Desktop. That’s the third time I’ve bought Heroes2. I’m pretty good with money. 
Blah!
I’ll manage like this. I wonder if they bought anything.
And that was the end of Orange.
Flint is already here, so I’m going to have him claim the mines while Dawn heads out again. I’ll have Fineous the not-Kelzen meet her somewhere to provide some extra units.
I wonder what that hut will teach.
Day 34
The shrine next to the encampment teaches curse. Being the opposite of bless, that’s nice. I think I prefer bless.
It teaches scouting.
Those pudding like guys are Water elementals. They have the best walking sound. We can take them, but I think I’ll let them be.
Fineous the not-Kelzen is near the open area in the middle, it will take Dawn about two turns to get there. After that, we’ll have Dawn attack the next castle.
As expected, that shrine teaches cold ray, the lesser brother of lightning bolt.
Cold Ray: For 6 spell points you can attack one enemy with a beam of cold, doing 20 times your spell power in damage. It’s 1 spell point cheaper for 5 damage per spell point less than lightning bolt. I prefer lightning bolt.
Day 35
Fineous the not-Kelzen is getting some extra knowledge from the witchdoctor while he waits for Dawn.
Flint is waiting around for a bit. I’m going to wait three days after which I’ll purchase my upgraded sky castle to get titans. After that it’s his turn to get an army.
Day 36
Ignore the hand, that’s a graphical glitch caused by the screenshotting. No idea why. This also only happens on my laptop and not on my desktop.
I had almost forgotten about the taxlien. Better give that to Fineous the not-Kelzen so he can give it to a new friend.
Day 37
Dawn visited the witchdoctor hut and now let’s claim that scary sulfur mine.
Titans! The sky castle gets some gold trimming and two larger towers. Now to get them to Dawn at some point.
day 38
Dawn desperately needs new spell points, so she’s going for a quick detour to the well. I was right about the mine, it was flagged. Flagged by green.
Day 39
Note how much larger her green mana bar is near her portrait. She was thirsty.
Meet my new hero Myrini. She’s our sacrificial lamb. She just delivered two titans to Fineous the not-Kelzen who traded her for it with the tax lien. A fair trade if I ever saw one. I just noticed that Myrini has another skill going on, weird since she’s level 1. The AI must’ve had her at some point and lost her to some Artificial Stupidity.
I finally noticed that I’m drowning in wood and ore, so I bought a market place in both my towns.
Trading in progress. I’ll use the money to outfit Flint with some units.
An army takes shape.
Day 40
Dawn is going to get those two titans and then we’ll finish this map.
Day 41
She also got his three boars.
Meet Ranloo the Necromancer. He doesn’t sparkle, but I’m pretty sure he’s a vampire.
Indeed, still no army for Flint. Necromancer units really like having a necromancer hero. Flint will be following Dawn again. :hush: Flint is also one of the heroes I irrationally dislike, but not on the same level of Maximus. 
Day 42
I just saw an enemy run past.
Tracks are fresh, the mushrooms are still warm. :drugs:
These are her last moments for us.
I want that shield, because I just don’t have that many artifacts yet.
We can easily handle one of the worst units in the game, so we follow.
So how about those Titans?
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Titans are the ultimate wizard unit and possibly the ultimate Heroes2 unit. Though personally I think black dragons are better. Tied with the black dragons for the most HP they improve on the giants in every conceivable way. The speed goes from average to very fast, they get a ranged attack, they suffer no melee penalty, they are immune to mind spells and get a sizeable increase to their attack and defense skills making them the highest in the game. However they aren’t immune to magic like the dragons, which is both a blessing (possibly literally) and a curse (possibly literally).
They are also still ridiculously expensive costing 5.000 and 2 gems per titan.
They also come complete with some badass sound effects, listen to the getting hit and striking back. I had to record this on my PC at a later time, so this is them getting hit by and retaliating against zombies.
Now about that shield.
We just struck gold. Diplomacy is often seen as one of the most broken skills, meanwhile Archery works miracles with the range dependant Wizard faction. I’ll take archery.
Archery adds a +10% increase to damage at basic level, 25% at advanced and 50% at expert level.
It adds a +2 to our defense.
Take your best shot!
And that’s how you get rid of cursed artifacts.
Day 43
I considered attacking the zombies, but the Gazebo isn’t going to help me much.
I found Crodo and he has an…army?
Day 44
Couldn’t stay away from me could you? 
This army is so bad I’m not certain what I should even attack first.
So my Boars are feeling lucky.
Like really lucky, probably because they don’t know what’s for dinner.
See you next castle!
The ring of elementals halves the cost of summoning spells. Nice, if I had elemental summing spells.
A lucky clover adds a +1 to luck, also nice but since Dawn has the luck skill it will soon be obsolete.
This will be short.
Really short.
Tough choice. Take the enemy castle or take the purse from the elves.
Fineous returns home and discovers the price of upgrading for giants and this is just a single one.
Day 45
This first level is really easy so far.
Did you know going through doors works best when they’re open? This goes for all types of doors, glass, wood, you name it. Morglin invented the drawbridges! Behold one of the greatest technological advancements since Heroes1, where a defending hero was stuck inside the walls until the walls were brought down by the enemy. The drawbridge automatically opens when a unit wants to go through and closes when it has passed. You can however jam the drawbridge by putting a corpse on top of it.
Victory!
Stop offering me Eagle Eye.
Two down one to go. The forces of good will prevail. I’ll bet that in some alternate universe Archibald is having a much harder time.
That’s a really sad example of a barbarian castle. Well, at least we still have music to post.
Barbarian theme
Because I can I bought another level of mage guild here and off we go take on the last castle.
Holy word: The exact opposite of death ripple. For 9 spell points you can do damage to all undead units on the field for 10 times your spell power.
Mass haste: For 10 spell points you can cast haste on all your units at the same time. This is a great spell.
Flint comes along to flag everything.
Let’s give the undead something to do.
Day 46
Run along now Dawn, there’s more stuff to kill.
Time to test out the undead.
That’s a group of 66 FroDos.
And yet I don’t see any problems.
We cast death ripple, because why not. Note that the necromancer on the horse casts spells by slamming his fists together.
Victory, now for my skeletons.
These halflings didn’t drink enough milk.
That’s pretty neat, thank you witch!
So Zam is back as well? How amusing. Anyway, according to this he is a builder. We’ll see what kind of castle he has then next time.
Next update we finish this map…probably.