Seeking Armageddon

What a disaster. Seeking Armageddon took me eight freakin' months to complete! Why so long? To understand how I screwed up the scenario, you must first understand the mission objectives.

To win the scenario, Xeron must gather three artifacts: the Breastplate of Brimstone, Hellfire Sword, and Shield of the Damned. The three artifacts are hidden behind border guards, which must be unlocked by visiting border tents. It is unnecessary to capture all enemy towns.

You can probably guess what happened to me. I unlocked one of the border guards with a weak hero (Olema) but didn't have enough movement points to take the artifact. The computer immediately sent a hero (Fiur) to snatch the Shield of the Damned. Then, when I fought Fiur to get the artifact back, he fled. This essentially removed one of the three artifacts from play and made it impossible for me to complete the scenario.

Xeron starts the scenario with the Shackles of War. The artifact prevents enemies from escaping combat.

However, I did not anticipate that the enemy would be crafty enough to steal my artifacts. In order to prevent Xeron from getting defeated by a high level elementalist and instantly losing the scenario, I left him in the Eeofol part of the map to play defense.

Although Olema was my primary offensive hero, I forgot to transfer Xeron's Shackles of War. Bad move.

After Fiur snatched the Shield of the Damned and fled, he essentially returned to the enemy's hero pool. I had to wait eight months for the enemy to randomly rehire Fiur. During this time, I made sure that the enemy continued to capture towns, gather resources, and hire heroes. I realized that if the enemy was too weak, the AI would simply hide inside its cities. When Fiur finally reappeared, I breathed a sigh of relief.

The moral of the story is: always fight enemy heroes with Xeron to prevent them from escaping. Also, don't unlock any border guards unless you have enough movement points to grab whatever artifact is there.

You might be wondering why I didn't just load a saved game after realizing Fiur stole the artifact. The truth is, I didn't realize what had really happened until I had overwritten my old save file. When I crushed all enemy towns and the scenario did not end, I scoured the map and realized Fiur must have stolen the last artifact. I had saved the game prior to capturing the final enemy town. So from there, I had to gradually let the enemy rebuild its strength and cycle through its hero pool.

Aside from the Fiur incident, the scenario was pretty easy. You don't need to spend a lot of money upgrading your starting cities. All three of them begin with a lot of buildings already activated. Additionally, the three cities have Castle Gates, which allow a hero to instantly transport between them.

The scenario does attempt to challenge players by cutting your resources at the start of the week. But there are so many mines surrounding the Eeofol part of the map that they barely put a dent in your treasury. Lastly, the conflux heroes are surprisingly passive. None of them bothered to enter the lava terrain to attack my cities.

In retrospect, I could have saved myself some time by simply restarting the scenario. But by the time I realized what had happened with Fiur, Xeron was already maxed out and I stupidly assumed it wouldn't take long for the AI to rehire Fiur.