Toggle Background Color

Update 14, The Gauntlet

It's been a long time since last update and the people have voted. The decision was made that we’ll be going after the army. Since goons apparently don’t think my totally real sixpack is enough to make an impression on any would be joiners we’ll be taking the breastplate.


See I selected the right options. I know how this game works. I also have to point out that I love you guys for picking the seventh level after the sixth.


So there’s one enemy, three roads and eight weeks. Wait, is that a barbarian hero?


This isn’t really Crag Hack, the programmers have obviously erred. Everyone knows that Crag has three brothers, this here is Frag Hack. He’s Crag Hacks smarter brother and would definitely not be tricked by skeletons wearing skin. The remaining brother, Drag Hack, would go on to invent the disguise spell. For completion sake have a picture.

Anyway Frag is already level 5 and comes with advanced pathfinding, advanced leader ship, basic wisdom, basic estates and basic logistics. This is an awesome skillset.
He’s also packing some stylish boots and my breastplate. It’s unfortunate about his knowledge though, but hopefully we’ll be able to find some artifacts to help. His army sure is something. :nyall:
Don’t get me wrong though, it’s not bad. It’s well balanced. We have two good shooters. We have tanky pikemen and two flyers both of which fill a specific niche. It’s just that it’s a ragtag bunch of misfits and I still dislike mixing armies for no adequate reason.


Welcome to Sandcaster. It’s a warlock village where people with proper priorities live. As such, before building defences and dwelling they opted to build a statue of me and a dungeon for me. This won’t do obviously, so let’s fix that.


Or not. I guess we’re going to have to search out an upgradeable castle while we run the gauntlet.


This is going to take a while. No hurry, it’s not like there’s a war going on.

Day 2

I enjoy the view for a bit. I see 3 villages and three roads. I see a wizard village all the way at the top, a knight village in the middle and a sorceress village to the south. My love of Phoenixes tells me to go south, but my love of fighting killing peasants is also very strong. I also imagine the middle road as being the fastest road.

Day 3

Here we go.


Wrong choice. I have to fight grand elves through this route. I guess I’d better say goodbye to my druids and rangers.

Day 4

Oh right. The foundry upgrades pikemen. The hillfort does others.


Good riddance!

Day 5

I’ve found a gazebo and I elected to upgrade logistics. Considering the distance I have to travel I opted for logistics over diplomacy.


I don’t think this will be useful.


And so we walk on.

Day 6

First grand elves and now minotaur kings with my only reinforcements being these two dwellings holding archers and peasants. I feel like I’ve made a terrible mistake.


Please blow your nose, there appears to be an arrow in it.


The sprites kill the top minotaurs. The birds easily eat the other weakened minotaurs and my pikeman run in to close the gap leading to the druids. I prepare to lose a bird.


He was short of killing it doing only 28 damage. Thanks for the breastplate guys!


And now for lots of veteran pikemen.

Day 7

I can’t believe they would run away from this army.


Let’s check out the pretty blue cloak first.

Day 8

Vampire week.


Since I’m in the habit of saving women these days I swoop in and help her. One bear ass makes one cloak, Enroth has an excellent exchange rate.


Time to make some distance.


I’m lost. Where is the castle I need.

Day 9

I’m not fighting them for a tiny pile of gold.


So I walk back again.

Day 10

Considering the veteran pikemen ran I guess these guys will also bolt.


Sometime later…

Day 11

Time to attack a village to break the monotony.


Yep, this will break the monotony.


Focus on killing the archers and then we’ll take out the champions. I still really like sprites. No retaliation makes any unit great.


Stab with the spear, peck with the beak and ignore everything else!


This is going well. Good thing Rocs are tanky.


The druids charge and fire at the pikemen. Frags powerful offense is really paying off.


And the sprites make out with the peasants killing them instantly.


This went pretty well.


I guess I’ll pick diplomacy. Maybe I can get some units on the cheap.


This is a village. Nice. Well, I upgrade the pikemen and fill up on archers and veteran pikemen. There’s only a week worth of units in here, so I don’t think swapping out any units I currently have will be worth it. I like the utility of sprites too much otherwise I’d bring the champions. Now for some spells.
I like what the farmlands look like without a castle.


Too bad he can’t learn dimension door at the moment. Or chain lightning, or anti magic or view all or mass dispell. He can barely cast the spells he can learn.


So now what? I can’t continue on the same road. I guess I have to travel back a bit to find my way. I almost feel like I’m playing Heroes1 siege of the Warlock again.

Day 11

I picked up earthquake from the shrine and I’m now making my way back.

Day 12
Today was an eventful day.

Day 13

I hoped that this route would yield results and while I haven’t found the way further yet, the ore mine will be most welcome. You know, looking closer at those paladins I think that there may be a path between the mountain and the pile of gold.


They are the mummies


Protecting 25 B.C.


They are the mummies


Protectors of the world today!


Fun and profit and luck.


By my breastplate and shield of +2 I shall never be harmed much again!


Yes, I’m attacking the paladins. The reason being that upon closer inspection it really appears that there is a path behind the gold. I guess that this is the route I have to take.
Fortunately, Frag is an excellent spellcaster.


At which point I notice that he still only has 10 spellpoints which isn’t even enough for earthquake despite knowing it.


Fortunately, we’ve learned by now that violence, little girls with wings and hitting really hard can solve problems.


That went well.

Day 14

All hail the ogre lords!


And off we go again.


I really hope to find another sawmill at some point.

Day 15

Anyone else have any requests that I should wish for?


There’s water here, an observatory and a Warlock village. This looks promising.

Day 16

Who else but my nemesis Maximus!


I hope this village is upgradeable.


I blind the Gargoyles, they’re very fast flyers. The druids shoot the centaurs.


You’ll notice my arrow is set for the Minotaur kings private parts. The reason is simple. The veteran pikemen are going to attack them leaving the druids unprotected. The griffins will swoop in and attack which the druids will tank. At worst I will lose one as opposed to the many rangers I could lose. Meanwhile after the griffins the sprites and rocs get their turns to rock.


This is actually his second attack. We had a morale boost. We lost a veteran pikeman to the counter attack.


So the griffins flew over, attacked the druids, killed one and were killed by the rangers who are now going to kill the minotaur kings.


One obligatory sprite shot.


Two nothing special.


Five is the damage the gargoyles now do.


Sixty-eight is the number of this screenshot.


And finally the druids go for a walk before finishing things.


That went great.


Pathfinding it is then.


Finally some good spells.


This village was upgradeable. Due to everything that’s already been built I only need to build a swamp before I can start my tower construction. Unfortunately I am in desperate need of ore to fund such an undertaking. Fortunately I can now hire additional heroes and cover more ground.


Get that ore mine Frag.

I usually aim at around 100 images per update and this is something of a dull level from this point on. All I’ll be doing now is hunting for resources until time is nearly up at which point I’ll cross the river. Enjoy this compilation.


Oh no, 30 days left!


Black Dragons! There was a lot of doubt on what I would be bringing along for the ride.


And with a few days left I set foot upon this incredibly important island holding a massive metropolis of a village.


Frag didn’t get too many extra levels from creeping, but he’s good. I spent a lot of time thinking about the other units to bring. Ultimately the Warlock units won out compared to the 50 veteran pikemen I was carrying thanks to having nearly identical numbers while having high stats and good utility.
I’ll miss my 139 sprites. I really wanted to bring them along, but being made out of tissue paper would’ve only helped if I had a cold.
I really don’t know if splitting my stack up was a good idea.


There’s the enemy!


This is going well. I killed their centaurs with my gargoyles and their gargoyles suicided on my top black dragons. We also played blind the minotaur and found that we’re evenly matched.


The birds go at it. Have you ever seen birds fight in real life? Those fights can get nasty.


Walking to the other side as the only non flyer.


The gold shorts are much better than the boring old blue shorts.


That went really well.


I’ll pick estates. He needs to be able to do some accounting if he’s going to take ownership of the land.


Now advanced wisdom shows up. Ah well, he didn’t have the spell points anyway. Which actually would’ve been fixed by these two level ups.


Huzzah!


Other than the view, what’s so great about lakeside? Actually, why did we need to be specifically here to get the units? What’s wrong with our backyard?

Well, that was it. Only two more levels to go unless I want to play level 8 for completion sake. Join me next time for the intermission.