Monday, August 22, 2011

Burning Of Tatalia


The final scenario in the Playing with Fire campaign is Burning of Tatalia. It's a massive jungle map featuring four strong allied enemy factions, a slew of hidden ambushes, maze like architecture, and very tough AI.

The undead Lord Haart has burned his way into the inner jungles of Tatalia. Only Adrienne can save her people from the undead menace.


In the intro cutscene, we finally get a glimpse of the newly resurrected Lord Haart. He looks kind of like the old Lord Haart, but decked out in evil looking armor and sitting in a room filled with bone architecture. What is it about undead lords and their macabre decorations?

I seem to recall that Arthas from Warcraft III had the same problem. Once his mind was corrupted by the Lich King, he started putting skulls all over his armor. Why?

I guess man has always had a fascination with death. My friend Ryan went to Czechoslovakia last year and returned with pictures of a chilling landmark called the Bone Church. Yes, it's a church decorated with bones. Chandeliers... altars... everything. I imagine religious ceremonies there take on an extra layer of spookiness.


If you've been playing along with me, I sincerely hope you managed to level up all of your heroes in the two previous scenarios. If not, you're in for a very long battle.

I found it incredibly important to begin the map with the maximum number of heroes allowed at the highest level possible. That's because I needed them to spread across the map and secure as many fortresses as possible. By doing so, I obtained enough gold to fund the rest of my war effort. If I moved too slow, the enemy would attack my cities and overwhelm my heroes, forcing me to restart the map.

Near the starting area, there is a subterranean gate that will lead the the first necropolis city. Since this necropolis is isolated from the others, the enemy won't try to recapture it until late in the game. So I made sure to capture it as early as possible to use its City Hall and obtain extra gold.

After defeating some bone dragons west of the starting fortress, I gained access to a stone lith. It transported me to an inaccessible jungle area and a lone fortress. I discovered that the enemy rarely goes through the lith to attack this hidden fortress. I decided to build my Capitol here to avoid the pain of continually shelling out 10,000 gold to rebuild it later.

I also noticed that there were many red garrisons on the map with allied troops. Luckily, the troops can actually be taken out of the garrisons and placed in your army. So I immediately headed toward the garrisons to bolster my army.

If you leave the troops in the garrison, they'll quickly be defeated. But if you put them in your army, their fighting ability can double/triple/quadruple thanks to the combat bonuses granted by your high level heroes. Unfortunately, when I was playing, the enemy did managed to overtake some of the garrisons before I could rescue them.


In previous maps, I complained that there was no way to learn Town Portal. As a result, scenarios dragged on longer than necessary. This map finally grants you the spell. However, you can only obtain it by completing a short quest.

In the middle of the map, near the shore, there is a seer hut requesting the Armor of Wonder. I obtained the artifact (quite accidentally) by fighting the hydras next door. The seer then traded me the Tome of Earth Magic for the Armor of Wonder.

With the Tome of Earth Magic on hand, I was now able to cast every Earth Magic spell in the game, including Town Portal. I can't tell you how great this made me feel.

I gave the artifact to Adrienne and appointed her my official town defender. The other benefit of Town Portal is that it allowed Adrienne to escape defeat if Lord Haart or another high level enemy hero came knocking on the door. Discretion is the better part of valor, especially when the scenario is programmed to end in defeat if Adrienne ever runs, surrenders, or falls in combat.


There are many ambushes on the map, often featuring nasty configurations of bone dragons and vampires. If you're not careful, a powerful hero can be instantly wiped out, just for exploring!

Thankfully, not all scripted events work in the enemy's favor. Eventually, Tatalia will rise up and flock to Adrienne's aid, populating your key cities with fresh recruits. Just make sure Lord Haart doesn't take them before you do.


Lord Haart flies the blue banner and is pretty easy to spot. He's the one with the massive army of death. If this were Heroes V, he would leave a huge, fiery trail wherever he went.

I encountered him several times on the map. Every time, he swarmed me with summoned elementals and then retreated. However, I finally defeated him in the end by capturing all of his cities so he had no place to run.


All in all, I found this map incredibly infuriating. The enemy heroes are fast and coordinated. They combine their forces and attack relentlessly. It's important to understand the layout of the map and target the enemy one color at a time, rather than rushing foolishly into battle.


The Tome of Earth Magic is crucial for the defense of cities. Without it, the map is nearly impossible.

I also found it critical to leave secondary heroes near subterranean gates to serve as 'sentries.' Their job was to prevent stragglers from secretly capturing your cities. Because most of your cities are wide open (meaning they are situated next to a gate or ocean) it's very easy for a far away enemy to suddenly recapture them.

That being said, the map is the ultimate test of micromanagement and multitasking ability. If you complete this scenario, you can pretty much complete anything else the game throws at you. It doesn't get any tougher than this.

9 comments:

  1. This is such a great blog. The humor is fresh and your guide is quite useful. Once you're done with the the expansions, I highly recommend you start playing the Heroes Chronicles expansion. There aren't many resources or guides for this expansion and I'm sure many fans would be grateful if you played through them. You can get all eight chapters at GOG.com.

    Again, this is a superb blog; very underrated and under-visited. Keep up the good work.

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  2. Ah, what a fantastic blog! Well written and entertaining. I just replayed the first scenario of Playing with Fire myself. Too bad I didn't start a bit earlier, so I coulda played along with you.

    Very fun map, but I have to call you out on one particular thing! You wrote that there is no chance to get Town Portal in this campaign until late in the last map, but in the first one you have access to four Castle-towns, which can build their mage guilds to lvl 4. As Town Portal is a fourth level spell, I did indeed get town portal in my first town, and ended the map with 4 lvl 12 heroes with expert town portal (including Tazar with 25 defense default).

    I fear this campaign isn't going to be all that challanging after all :(

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  3. Yep, you're right. I guess I just got unlucky with my spells.

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  4. One of the seer's huts in the previous campaign actually gives the town portal spell as a reward for something or other. Luckily I've got a hero with the teaching ability, so I was able to pass it on to almost all of my heroes.

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  5. The second scenario has a seer's hut that gives you town portal in exchange for 30 water elementals. There are about 5-6 places you can recruit the water elementals in the underground, so 30 elementals is only one week's output. So that is quite easy to get. I got Vidomina in the second scenario and pumped her up to max leves with expert necromancy and expert scholar, also most of my heroes had expert earth magic. Teach expert earth town portal to all your pumped up heroes, and take over all the underground towns as soon as you can in the final scenario (also a good way to get Vidomina her legions of skeleton warriors in the process). That, along with taking the 3-4 towns that are closest to your initial position essentially makes the game trivial. After the first month or so, I even stopped using Adrienne actively and just kept her safe in Backwater, casting a couple of view earth and view air's each turn and town portaling from town to town (to get an army) and then to a target town if target town needed defending.

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  6. I guess you can play every campaign without expert town portal, just to make it much much more challenging ;)

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  7. The creature dwelling capture champ was more irritating. This last champaign was easy. In the prev. champ you could aquire the town portal spell and if you have(i had) one hero with expert scolar, all my 6 heroes got all spells exept lvl5. With this setup the last champaign is too easy. (all heroes with expert earth and air magic. ). Just spam destroy undead, chain lightening, meteor shower and tp to the town thats about to be sieged.

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  8. hello, say im wondering where the heck is the blue keymasters tent is. I cant find it at all.

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