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View Full Version : Revenge of the Lord - a good campaign v0.99



alexsa2015sa
November 18th, 2017, 14:26
"The kingdom of Dominus is ancient, its royalty tracing its lineage to the first Avatar himself. Today, your inheritance is all but destroyed by vile monsters from the underworld, and you are backed into the corner at Dwarfton. The city of hard-working folk is under siege, and it seems all but impossible to repel the invaders. In desperation, you perform a mystical ritual, found in the moldy tome spirited from your ancestors' library during your flight from evil. At the price of your humanity, it bestows great powers of omniscience upon you, allowing you to direct your subjects with superb ease.

The evil keepers will suffer, as you pursue Revenge of the Lord."

A "good keeper" campaign designed for use with KeeperFX 0.4.6 unofficial , 9 levels + two secret levels. For obvious thematic as well as balancing reasons you normally get no functional prison, no functional torture chamber (but there are some capturable slabs to unlock Samurai as per KeeperFX-defined attractions), and of course no graveyard. ...That doesn't mean the AI keepers don't get these rooms, though (Vampires in particular are pure evil). Scavenger room is buildable, but isn't all that useful with maps having few neutral/heroic creatures to scavenge and Priestesses are infamous for Wind/Gas poorly interacting combo. Bridge building is limited at 1 slab, since the Attack Rooms AI for some reason will target a bridge if it sees one (...was that ever reported as a bug, btw? Since it is one)... and to prevent walling in at liquid corners.

Difficulty level is somewhere along the lines of "at least as hard as original DK later levels but easier than AK"; it's impossible to wall in for one reason or another on most levels, there are no gems until the latter half of level and even then their mining triggers more attackers, and half the time you don't even get to design the dungeon layout (4 of 9 levels start with pre-dug dungeon with the remaining map taken up by enemies). All of your enemies are always allied. Transfer creature specials are present, winning without them is possible but may be more challenging. The final level might be the most challenging, especially if you feed the AI with corpses and let it build up an army of vampires.

There should be no puzzles using true exploits here. And I did make sure to patch the walls with impenetrable rock when necessary. Some of the maps (Sparkleforest, Misty Bog, maybe other ones) did hang unannounced a couple of times, but it did not happen often enough - I only reloaded saves three times throught the campaign on last testing playthrough, or something like (less than once per map).

There is a file containing mentor scripts, but they're not voiced because 1) there's only 1 terrible voice actor easily available for me - myself (and I'm severely rusty at spoken English) and 2) they're still subject to change.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MKx7UlDMIilKY0VA7brSrwkdTzKdU48h/view?usp=sharing

v 0.994 - more helpful messages across campaign.

v 1.00 - finally got around to fixing most bugs. Reduced difficulty for earlier levels somewhat, still challenging enough. A few helpful messages were added.

YourMaster
November 18th, 2017, 16:34
I took a quick look, and first impressions are very nice. Will actually play something soon.

I've uploaded it for you: https://keeperklan.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=130.
You're the 'uploader', so I think you can update it as you please. I can't.

EDIT:

I've attempted the first level and failed. I enjoyed it though and will try again, very good map. Next time I'll try to push on more, see if that stops some parties from coming and try to use the boulders for defense in the meantime. Those hounds from the south are killer though.
Also, I hope next time I can prevent the enemies from destroying my temples, I'd like to get monks.

alexsa2015sa
November 19th, 2017, 00:27
Um, well, this version (edited post-haste after last playtest) seems to contain an incorrect endless loop for level 1, which launches an unstoppable horde of attackers, so... well. I honestly lost count how many times I have scripted this kind of errror.
I fixed this, but unless I misunderstand the interface, I can't edit file here because I'm not mapmaker (as of this post).

YourMaster
November 19th, 2017, 00:38
Well, since I gave ownership to you, neither can I. I messaged Rex for you, so he can give you the permissions you need.

And you seem to make pretty advanced and complex maps/scripts, it's quite a surprise to see a campaign like this come out of the blue. Have you made maps before? Have you been lurking here for a bit to see what was out there?

And no, I don't think there has ever been a bug report about the 'attack rooms' objective, you can make one here (https://github.com/dkfans/keeperfx/issues).
I must say, I don't even remember playing a map where heroes come in and destroy your rooms, very interesting mechanic.
I peaked at the script of your first map, and did notice that indeed if even a single temple piece is destroyed you can never claim Monks. If this is not intended you can consider changing the temple availability from 'player0 >= 8' to 'player_good <= 0' temple tiles. This way you can research a temple as soon as you've claimed all temples. (provided there are 8 on the map).

I also think the 'just one tile of bridge' is an interesting new mechanic.

alexsa2015sa
November 19th, 2017, 01:37
...
And you seem to make pretty advanced and complex maps/scripts, it's quite a surprise to see a campaign like this come out of the blue. Have you made maps before? Have you been lurking here for a bit to see what was out there?
...
I peaked at the script of your first map, and did notice that indeed if even a single temple piece is destroyed you can never claim Monks. If this is not intended you can consider changing the temple availability from 'player0 >= 8' to 'player_good <= 0' temple tiles. This way you can research a temple as soon as you've claimed all temples. (provided there are 8 on the map).

Mapmaking and modding is my primary hobby - I frankly don't even play that much anymore, last few years. DK1 was one of the first games I ever played back in 90s, when I was more of a gamer. Some months ago I've decided to play it once again, was surfing the net, stumbled upob KeeperFX, played it for a while,.. and then I thought "why not?" ;) There are several maps I've designed before making this campaign, but they're not as polished and several suffer from perpetual hangs; I'll see which are worth publishing later this week (they're mostly classic evil keeper maps). Room destruction and capture-to-research is one of things I played around with one of those maps, actually; you don't even get to build treasure rooms until enough tiles are captured, never mind the library!

Concerning level 1:, there are actually a lot of temple tiles, with several 8-tile clusters, so it's not quite as painful to lose slabs here. And the inability to claim Monks if you manage to lose all Temples on the map is intentional, given that it's borderline impossible for a surviving player. I've actually toned down difficultly for this level multiple times; one version (with different map layout) did have exactly 8 tiles which were to be protected at all costs.

Woudo
November 19th, 2017, 11:16
First level took me a paltry THREE HOURS to do. I decided to do a blind playthrough video of it so I was avoiding loading the game and lost a lot of troops to boulders and just generally really dumb shit. By the time I reached the heart, the map had actually hit the creature limit with how many reinforcements had spawned in the hero heart. The classic 30 vs 220 / David v Goliath fight which I did eventually win.

Problems I encountered;

If you approach the hero heart early from the north, it'll spawn some "boss parties" in the heart room which have Vampires and Mistresses in them. If that happens, you can no longer clear out the 'lieuntenants' and disable party spawning until you open up the heart.
Why is there no Power_hand_slap?
I had a moment where the tier 1 undead harass just endlessly spawned until it hit creature limit. I'm not sure how that happened. It was right after I cleared out all the monsters in the heart.
You need to add fireball effects to the lava so it doesn't look so dark.

And what's with that small bit of path on the west side of the player's dungeon?

DBlac
November 19th, 2017, 12:51
I can imagine the lack of a slap would be a thematic choice, i doubt a "Good Keeper" would be slapping their heroes about.

alexsa2015sa
November 19th, 2017, 13:28
Problems I encountered;
...

Thanks, those oversights will be addressed - the boss parties weren't meant to prevent you from stopping attacks, and the 220 vs 30 wasn't meant to happen either (even the level 9 has at most dozen of Reapers zipping around). The endless undead spawn occurs because of a wrong script, too (reset timer washidden within conditional statement). As for fireballs... odd, but I was certain I did place them on this level. The bit of path was meant to prevent player from expanding 3x4 room to 5x4... although the 3x3 on east can be expanded.

The lack of slap is, indeed, thematic choice. I think I'll add this tidbit to description of campaign if not ingame information, since it's not evident and, let's face it, slapping imps is intrisic part of playing DK. You can't direct your boulder traps, as well.

I can't yet manage files here (and unless I fundamentally misunderstand something, it'll require permission as mapmaker), and as long as the link in the OP remains external, it's the latest version.

YourMaster
November 19th, 2017, 13:46
You could try to PM Metal Gear Rex or Dotted directly for those permissions.

I noticed the lack of slapping right away, and immediately understood it to be disabled because of the 'good keeper' thing, so for me it did not require further explanation.

EDIT: I've finished the first map, I enjoyed it. The difficulty was quite manageable the second go around. That's the thing with hounds, either they destroy you or you destroy them, this time I was strong enough to defend against those mid-level parties going straight for the hearth without any units. I even made some mistakes, I did not train thieves because I assumed I would never get them past level 10, but in the end I had many increase level specials that would have taken me over the edge. Also, for some reason I forgot to make an actual temple to sacrifice imps and I lost many against traps and hounds.

The objective did not click with me, as you mention I had to destroy the 'lieutenants', but I never did figure out how to do it. Right before the end when I cleared the south-west I got the message I cleared out the Warlocks. This is when I got Destroy Walls, so used all the specials I collected, breached the heart-room from the south with the spell and cast CTA on the hearth and won. There was a troll-counter attack, but that came too late as they came right before I won and I did not have to fight them.

EDIT2: If you describe your issue about what's wrong with the bridge-attack and why, and have a map(+save) where it happens, I think I can fix it.

Woudo
November 19th, 2017, 18:31
I did the same thing with the Thieves; assumed you wouldn't be able to ascend to Knights, so focused on Dwarves instead. It was a mistake, Dwarves are terrible.
I remembered Dwarves being much, much tankier than they were in this campaign.

YourMaster
November 19th, 2017, 18:44
They manufactured, which was really helpful on the map.

Metal Gear Rex
November 20th, 2017, 15:09
I can't yet manage files here (and unless I fundamentally misunderstand something, it'll require permission as mapmaker), and as long as the link in the OP remains external, it's the latest version.

Should be able to edit your files now. Sorry for the delay.

Hades
November 20th, 2017, 15:47
Seemed decent enough, but that huge wave of undead made the game unplayable.

YourMaster
November 20th, 2017, 16:12
I redownloaded the file from the google drive yesterday, and did not encounter any massive undead waves. I started the second map, but am still just at the beginning.

Hades
November 21st, 2017, 01:32
Just played the updated version. Nuked the heart and wiped out the enemy enclaves but there's no victory message for some reason.

Woudo
November 21st, 2017, 02:30
Finished level 2. Need to ally white and yellow so white can move through yellows doors.

Other than that it's great.

alexsa2015sa
November 21st, 2017, 03:04
Just played the updated version. Nuked the heart and wiped out the enemy enclaves but there's no victory message for some reason.
...That's one extra if statement which didn't compute (after extra one added elsewhere since I forgot being already at limit here), and it just so happened to be the victory condition. Oops.

Finished level 2. Need to ally white and yellow so white can move through yellows doors.
Other than that it's great.
That one yellow door? Shouldn't happen; it should've been white. Alliances with heartless players seem to be weird, as far as I noticed.

...okay, I seriously don't get how to go about uploading files here, so the google link stays for the moment.

Hades
November 21st, 2017, 11:20
One thing i [expletives redacted] hate about level 2 is the fact that you have to babysit your imps. As in when you need to address other matters they insist on going to strange doors for some gods damned reason. They even persist if they know full well that there are enemies.

Also, Level 2 seem to suffer the same level 1 problem as in infinite waves of creatures that are impossible to even have a hope in hell of stopping. This level makes me feel as though when I even sneeze I'm getting my skull crushed in. It's not a fun challenge, it's just frustrating. The only way I could see myself remotely surviving that is if I had full access to Samurai from the getgo. Instead, I have to make do with Thieves and Dwarves and a single knight.

alexsa2015sa
November 21st, 2017, 15:19
One thing i [expletives redacted] hate about level 2 is the fact that you have to babysit your imps. As in when you need to address other matters they insist on going to strange doors for some gods damned reason. They even persist if they know full well that there are enemies.

Also, Level 2 seem to suffer the same level 1 problem as in infinite waves of creatures that are impossible to even have a hope in hell of stopping. This level makes me feel as though when I even sneeze I'm getting my skull crushed in. It's not a fun challenge, it's just frustrating. The only way I could see myself remotely surviving that is if I had full access to Samurai from the getgo. Instead, I have to make do with Thieves and Dwarves and a single knight.

It's an unexpected sentiment, although I'mbeing biased because I already know what to expect - and I didn't find any bugged endless loops here, only the intended ones. Have any of the enemy rooms been claimed, because that *does* reduce the attacking waves (a fact which remains true across the entire campaign) and the full-blown invasion *is* intented to be unstoppable (If you destroy blue and yellow first, the green/white are manageable)? Have you tried using more Fairies - they're frail for sure, but still worth their Lightning? Were Archers attracted (they're better at workshop if you're not Speeding dwarves)?Did you set up a corridor of death with traps which has an open line of sight with Traiining Room? And lastly, why in the name of all holy Thiefs are present on the battlefield? They must stay behind training, training and training up till level 10. About imps: have you tried Concealing them? There are no creatures to detect them beyond stray Flies, and if they want some doors knocked down, there's usually little reason not to satisfy their urge to go south (at least I never had any problems with that)

That said, I'll likely reduce difficulty of the level. On the same note, does the difficulty level mismatch the description of "at least as hard as last DK levels'? Because I don't recall levels upwards from 17 being particularly frustrating to beat.

Edit: (And I still can't update the file here on forum, because it keeps throwing error 413 "request entity is too large". What I'm doing wrong?)

Woudo
November 21st, 2017, 16:02
Level 2 kicked my shit in on the first try, but only because I was playing idly and digging up the world. On the second try I took more notice of the opening message and was proactive with clearing out the lairs and guardposts. I will admit I leaned very heavily on archer-possession to clear out the guard posts though as everyone is just too squishy to straight up mob-fight them. Anyone that tried to do these levels without possession is an absolute madman.


Here's my report on level 3;
"My liege, I have divined that a force of vampires from Misty Bog is approaching from south-east". No vampire attacks ever showed up. The only vampires present were those guarding the gems at the bottom.

Secondly, the player is able to 'wall-off' blue permanently by breaking alliance, claiming the outer tiles near the river and building guard posts, making him impossible to attack. They can then set ally again. It's also technically possible for the player to guardpost the entire right side of the map, dig into the gems and be completely protected from attacks while mining the gems. They'd have to cull their way through 200+ level 4 orcs/trolls/warlocks when they eventually did want to fight, but i'm just giving you a heads up that it's possible to do. The hero parties started ignoring Blue very quickly into the level anyway so it'd only be worth guardposting him if you were going to guardpost the entire river.

The "Lose if blue dies" script isn't indented properly -- And yet it still triggers. Nevermind, I guess. Blue was able to take a really hard beating before he finally died. He tanked the level 7 parties for quite a while. I feel like the "defend blue from the heroes" aspect of the map doesn't really kick off and it ultimately ends up as another "Trash the spawners" level, but with a big blue ball at the bottom.

alexsa2015sa
November 21st, 2017, 16:26
Here's my report on level 3;
"My liege, I have divined that a force of vampires from Misty Bog is approaching from south-east". No vampire attacks ever showed up. The only vampires present were those guarding the gems at the bottom.

Secondly, the player is able to 'wall-off' blue permanently by breaking alliance, claiming the outer tiles near the river and building guard posts, making him impossible to attack. They can then set ally again. It's also technically possible for the player to guardpost the entire right side of the map, dig into the gems and be completely protected from attacks while mining the gems. They'd have to cull their way through 200+ level 4 orcs/trolls/warlocks when they eventually did want to fight, but i'm just giving you a heads up that it's possible to do. The hero parties started ignoring Blue very quickly into the level anyway so it'd only be worth guardposting him if you were going to guardpost the entire river.

The "Lose if blue dies" script isn't indented properly.

...If you haven't seen any vampires showing up, I suppose you might have completed the level sooner than they arrived - as per message, one payday later. They're not very strong level 3 ones, so they can die fast if monks stop them. Or, if you were walled off at the time, them not showing up through the hero gate is perfectly reasonable since amounts of the attackers are massive and they hit the limit quickly. Walling off the blue is an obvious exploit, but I won't do anything about it - why stop people from having fun clearing 200-ish monsters? ;)

Edit: ah, I see, the party was undeclared so they really didn't show up.

Hades
November 22nd, 2017, 00:07
Managed to complete it, thanks for the advice, and apologies for my brash temper earlier.

YourMaster
November 22nd, 2017, 00:54
I finished the second level as well. I enjoyed it, it played out completely different from the first one, but similar in the 'rules' like with the bridge and the claiming of rooms.

I think one of the key difficulties of these maps is not the amount of creatures you face, but the uncertainty of what you've got to do. This takes time, and it makes you cautious and this causes you to play slowly. Making the barracks you've got to take out visible might for instance already help out quite a bit as it gives players a target and some direction on where to use their sight spell. Making the first room be poorly guarded so that the player takes it out will teach him what to do to reduce the invading parties.

And I must admit I was a weakling like Woudo and cleared some of the early rooms with a possessed archer. Low level dwarves, thieves and fairies do not do well against orcs, trolls and biles.
The ending of this second map was a bit anti-climactic, I focused on the barracks first, so the end was cleanup duty, taking out all the rooms with biles left on the map.

EDIT: Looking at the script now when I finished the map I noticed I was supposed to be attacked by bile demons as well. You also forgot to define that party. Errors like that can easily be seen in the log file. Just quickly open your map - use the cheat menu to get there - close the game again and look at the log file for errors. Fix them all, check again and when the maps don't have errors anymore re-upload.
You've made a nice campaign, but these maps take hours to finish, it's frustrating for the players as well if after two hours of play they can't finish the map because of an error.

EDIT 2:


On the same note, does the difficulty level mismatch the description of "at least as hard as last DK levels'? Because I don't recall levels upwards from 17 being particularly frustrating to beat.

(And I still can't update the file here on forum, because it keeps throwing error 413 "request entity is too large". What I'm doing wrong?)

When you're saying 'At least as difficult as the final campaign levels' people expect something a bit more difficult, your maps are a lot harder than the campaign levels.

And that error seems to be an error of the forum, not your fault. Hope Dotted fixes it soon.

alexsa2015sa
November 22nd, 2017, 04:12
Thanks for the tips; I've sweeped through all maps that way using a post-victory save (...never thought it'd be useful, huh!), and there were indeed several errors, though none as severe. Several hint messages were added to levels to clarify the attack wave conditions; they're not always stoppable, like lv1 gem harvesting troll party.

But most importantly, level 4 contained an incorrect timer start (which crept in while copypasting information string), which caused sudden death to massive white attack around 2nd payday. Now, it's properly delayed until 3rd payday, and a hint message to help prevent sudden death-by-keeper was added.

Hades
November 22nd, 2017, 14:50
The biggest issue I have is that I am losing imps at an unacceptable rate. As in they just go off and get themselves killed, constantly. That's the most frustrating part, as there's no way to seal off any potential enemy bases so Imps don't go kill themselves.

YourMaster
November 22nd, 2017, 17:47
What do you mean there's no way to seal off enemy bases? You know you can build doors in the workshop, and lock doors so imps can't pass through right? I can't deny I lost a few imps, but that was mostly when I was attacked after each payday.
The enemy trolls did behave strangely though, they insisted on trying to destroy my workshop and had to walk all across the map and through my dungeon to get there. Walked right past my hearth. On this (the second) map I think the 'attack enemies' objective would have worked better.

Hades
November 23rd, 2017, 14:15
And level 5 crashes when I destroy the first heart for some reason.

alexsa2015sa
November 24th, 2017, 15:10
And level 5 crashes when I destroy the first heart for some reason.

That's not enough information to fix the problem, since I couldn't reproduce it yet. Does the crash happen consistently, and which heart in particular was destroyed?

YourMaster
November 24th, 2017, 15:48
It could have to do with the pathfinding crash, when you're up against the limit your came often crashes when you actually look at the heart when it is getting destroyed. He did not share his log file so there's no way to tell for sure.

Hades
November 25th, 2017, 08:53
Nvm the glitch was a one off.

ETA: Final level is absolutely impossible. As in, imps will get slaughtered by the blues who have a weird predilection for sending out imps to die, while the hero waves force you to overstretch (as in your heroes will be partially rested while the heroes have infinite respawns.

alexsa2015sa
November 27th, 2017, 04:43
ETA: Final level is absolutely impossible. As in, imps will get slaughtered by the blues who have a weird predilection for sending out imps to die, while the hero waves force you to overstretch (as in your heroes will be partially rested while the heroes have infinite respawns.

The AI at the last level breeds vampires. The imps are trying to get corpses, to die and create more corpses. Don't kill within blue vision if at all possible, and you can avoid them running around. in the final test run, I've fought ~45 heroes vs ~35 blues, and won after several reloads because the melee combat was very chaotic; I simply Destroyed Walls in the end to clear the space for casters since it happened just after I secured gems and mined the 30k gold.

For white attack waves: same as level 2, if you can't defeat them, you're not destroying/capturing their rooms fast enough. As in, I know I added level 10 attack waves, but I never saw one (except unconditional Horny and Mistress) attacking in actual game. Sure the transferred level 10 knight from previous level vastly simplified things, but I've tried without it to a limited success (ran out of gold before securing gems and gave up because workshop was small) and it's possible to wall off most of the attackers using lava corner+bridge slab if you're truly desperate and take out rooms via sniping+conceal... not that I tried. The level 4 stuff wasn't harmful enough.

Anyway,3 more neutral heroes were added for rescue to streamline things.
(Edit: I still can't update the file, but that's not really relevant compared to new evil keeper maps I've made.)

Woudo
November 27th, 2017, 15:00
Finished level 4, but bear in mind I haven't updated at all and are still on the original version, so what I say may already be fixed.

Green attacked super early, which you mentioned in a previous post, so I simply restarted and walled him off; keeping only the southern hero castle on my side of the fence. Slowly explored the map, trained my heroes and took over the castle. Killed the hellhounds by guardposting them into the lake and letting them out 4-5 at a time. Killed the dungeon heart party by breaking them apart with magic doors and skirmishing in lightning trap rooms. Then it was a case of smacking that fast-forward button while half my troops trained and the other half built magic doors. When everyone was a ten, I popped the multiply and rolled over green.

Problems;
- When you kill the hero heart, you're presented with what feels like the end-of-level text ("You're done here, now fuck off and go dick some vamps in misty bog"), but I still had to kill green and the after-parties. It doesn't take into account what sequence the player has done the main objectives in.
- There are some mistresses in a cavern just north of the player which are allied to green. Green doesn't normally have mistresses so I feel like they're supposed to be white-owned rather than green.
- I used my bridge, got given the message and then deleted the bridge. However I was never able to build it again.
- For the starting message "A local chieftain has challenged you.", I feel like the eye should point towards green's dungeon heart rather than the players.

For the first secret level, what is the guard post at the very top of the map supposed to be for? I was thinking it harboured a secret action point, but no dice.

YourMaster
November 27th, 2017, 18:45
I've yet to start the third level, but the 'eye' of the objective messages is consistently wrong in the first two levels as well. It seems to be always set to the player, instead of either to the direction of the objective or disabled.

Hades
November 27th, 2017, 20:17
The problem is, even when I have taken over the spawning bases, they still come over in the southeast.

YourMaster
November 27th, 2017, 22:51
Well, I've played a bit of the third level, and am going to try something different next time.

I started out carefully mining the gold tot he south without opening up my dungeon, quickly picking up gold before the blue imp took it. I also mined the gold around my heart and trained as much as I could. I never got more than 3 barbarians so my army was again very weak. When I got the message I had to take over rooms(playing v 0.994) I took over the first guard post you stumble into when you kill the trolls into the south-east gold, and claimed my second portal. I tried to look for other rooms to take over, but all the adjacent rooms are with level 10 bile demons, dragons and I even noticed lvl10 reapers.
But this also opened up my dungeon, and while the message say that blue is supposed to get attacked, all units attack me instead. My army just can't handle bile demons, and even orcs do too much against my soft army. Next time I will attempt to keep my dungeon closed and exploit my workshop instead. I noticed the invaders are quite low level so they are vulnerable to traps. There's also a path to the east with lava, so going that way might keep my dungeon saver for a bit. I still have no idea which rooms I've got to claim to stop the parties that attack me.

Woudo
November 28th, 2017, 05:48
Well, I've played a bit of the third level, and am going to try something different next time.

I started out carefully mining the gold tot he south without opening up my dungeon, quickly picking up gold before the blue imp took it. I also mined the gold around my heart and trained as much as I could. I never got more than 3 barbarians so my army was again very weak. When I got the message I had to take over rooms(playing v 0.994) I took over the first guard post you stumble into when you kill the trolls into the south-east gold, and claimed my second portal. I tried to look for other rooms to take over, but all the adjacent rooms are with level 10 bile demons, dragons and I even noticed lvl10 reapers.
But this also opened up my dungeon, and while the message say that blue is supposed to get attacked, all units attack me instead. My army just can't handle bile demons, and even orcs do too much against my soft army. Next time I will attempt to keep my dungeon closed and exploit my workshop instead. I noticed the invaders are quite low level so they are vulnerable to traps. There's also a path to the east with lava, so going that way might keep my dungeon saver for a bit. I still have no idea which rooms I've got to claim to stop the parties that attack me.

Wrong answer.

The correct strat is;
Thieves and Fairies go into Library.
Rush Workshop and Guardpost.
Acquire Archer.

YourMaster
November 28th, 2017, 09:11
Wrong answer.

The correct strat is;
Thieves and Fairies go into Library.
Rush Workshop and Guardpost.
Acquire Archer.

Did you simply exploit the level by possessing one sniping the lvl 10 units on the guard posts? Or do mid level archers do well enough against the invading parties?

Woudo
November 28th, 2017, 11:07
Did you simply exploit the level by possessing one sniping the lvl 10 units on the guard posts? Or do mid level archers do well enough against the invading parties?

Sniping is for pussies. I individually challenge each and every unit to a manly 1v1, and use my superior agility to kite them until they turn tail and run.
CTAing your entire army nets too many losses. Repeated skirmishing with your strongest troops takes so long, and the possibility of netting losses still remains. It's still viable but Archer possession is just so much easier.


Also I forgot to mention about level 4. Slapping is enabled when it presumably shouldn't be.

YourMaster
November 28th, 2017, 11:58
Yeah,.... I'm going to try my way first and if I fail again I might be forced to mimic your bravery and use the OP guided missile in possession to make all the guarding creatures disappear.

EDIT: And I failed again. So many parties, and I can't find any way to stop them. All the rooms are guarded by level 10 creatures and I can never become strong enough to take them on.
After I failed I checked the script, to find some hints on what to actually do to get the parties to stop and that seems even more impossible to do without going the route that Woudo suggested and just kill everything in possession. For example for the Warlocks to stop harassing me I've got to take down the party of 2 lvl 10 biles, 2 lvl 10 dragons and a lvl 10 reaper. Alexsa, how do you have this in mind?
The enemy waves are the exact creatures strong against the heroes you get. Barbarians kinda do OK against lower level orcs and trolls, but you only get 3. I haven't found enough specials to promote my thieves to knights, and otherwise Dragons+Biles+Orcs will destroy any amount of Thieves, Dwarves and Fairies.
I tried to go east this time, because I noticed as soon as you breach the door west all the hero parties attack you instead of the blue keeper, but I couldn't even claim the Portal there as I was blocked by a massive Orc party that would take out most of my army in a direct fight.

alexsa2015sa
November 29th, 2017, 02:12
Yeah,.... I'm going to try my way first and if I fail again I might be forced to mimic your bravery and use the OP guided missile in possession to make all the guarding creatures disappear.

EDIT: And I failed again. So many parties, and I can't find any way to stop them. All the rooms are guarded by level 10 creatures and I can never become strong enough to take them on.
After I failed I checked the script, to find some hints on what to actually do to get the parties to stop and that seems even more impossible to do without going the route that Woudo suggested and just kill everything in possession. For example for the Warlocks to stop harassing me I've got to take down the party of 2 lvl 10 biles, 2 lvl 10 dragons and a lvl 10 reaper. Alexsa, how do you have this in mind?
The enemy waves are the exact creatures strong against the heroes you get. Barbarians kinda do OK against lower level orcs and trolls, but you only get 3. I haven't found enough specials to promote my thieves to knights, and otherwise Dragons+Biles+Orcs will destroy any amount of Thieves, Dwarves and Fairies.
I tried to go east this time, because I noticed as soon as you breach the door west all the hero parties attack you instead of the blue keeper, but I couldn't even claim the Portal there as I was blocked by a massive Orc party that would take out most of my army in a direct fight.

Um. I simply dug the entrance to my dungeon in such a way that the monsters kept walking across half the map and running into Blue?. I'll retry the level 3 once more, but I don't recall having significant difficulties (EDIT" Compared to madness and mayhem which was the Knight's Castle).

I've always dug for eastern part of the dungeon by lava bridge. At level 5 fairies get heal, and can take Demonspawns at lair there. With Rebound at lv 7 they take them out easily, but I've normally attacked sooner to stop them from spawing.

The lv10 orc party wasn't much of a problem to me; they are tough, but not so much that 1-2 Monks+10 Fairies at level 7-8 can't kill them by luring them to more open space. Barbarians and Dwarves all went straight back into the portal since they're worse units overall. Monks only needed to survive something like ten seconds before pack of high-damage Fairies destroy attackers. My Thiefs trained up to Knights in natural way since there's plenty gold lying around, and Fairies are extremely cheap. My Archers (there were something like 6) were sitting at workshop, building traps which took out the lpw-level attackers who made it past the Abbeystone - they're better than Dwarves and can debuff Slow in a pinch. I recall my two lv 9 Monks (who rapidly turned 10 through Hailstorm) didn't find those Orcs sturdy enough to survive two, at most three skirmishes - and the healing makes the pause between skirmishes very short. When lair, workshop and barracks were gone, the hardest part is over, since the remaining forces can be dealt with reasonably using traps; I do recall having to wait for the Knights so that I could take the final Horny megaparty (there are MORE than 2) head-on instead of going around the backyard with CTA, but that's it.

Slapping on level 4 is indeed oversight.

YourMaster
November 29th, 2017, 12:10
Um. I simply dug the entrance to my dungeon in such a way that the monsters kept walking across half the map and running into Blue?.

I've always dug for eastern part of the dungeon by lava bridge. At level 5 fairies get heal, and can take Demonspawns at lair there. With Rebound at lv 7 they take them out easily, but I've normally attacked sooner to stop them from spawing.

The lv10 orc party wasn't much of a problem to me; they are tough, but not so much that 1-2 Monks+10 Fairies at level 7-8 can't kill them by luring them to more open space. Barbarians and Dwarves all went straight back into the portal since they're worse units overall. Monks only needed to survive something like ten seconds before pack of high-damage Fairies destroy attackers.

Ok, Next time I'll try a more fairy-heavy composition. Last two times I kept their numbers low because they get run down by Orcs and Trolls with speed quite heavily. If they outnumber the melee fighters a few of them will break off to specifically target the fairies. And Warlocks also do quite well against fairies because of the meteor spell. But indeed they do heavy damage so perhaps in high enough numbers I can take them out.

I'll also stop opening up the east part of the map all together. The level 10 demon spawn are already guarding that lair before the level starts though, so I can't go too quickly, army needs to be trained up to do so.

EDIT:

I finished the map. This time I ONLY opened up the right side of the map, and it played out completely different. Now I had time to train up - which also made fairies an option - and that training gave me enough strength to take out the east, and most of the rooms you needed to take over were there. My army was now also strong enough to take down the lvl7 party near the end without losses and I had enough traps to basically kill anything.
I accidentally won though, in a way that was not suppose to happen. At some point I think some white imps spawned, but I had walled of my dungeon. Because I was not yet near those imps to kill them, they tunneled into the white heart room from the east instead. I possessed an imp, quickly claimed to dirt past the guard post with the reaper on it and could kill the heart without fighting any enemies. I think I would otherwise have won easily as well, because my thieves where about to turn into knights and my fairies had rebound and that is a killer-combo.

My advice on this map is to reveal the lair, library, barracks, training and workshop rooms on the map with a 'reveal_map_location' command, either from the start or the first time a party spawns because you did not claim those rooms yet. This doesn't take any IF-commands, and it guides the player quite a bit in what to go for. In return, you could remove the red imp from the blue dungeon so that you can't mine gold without digging out.
The map is really difficult now if you go south or west first, and I don't know how the player is supposed to know to go east otherwise unless he does lots of sight-spells.
And look for a way to stop the imps from mining into the hearth room of course.

This time I enjoyed the map, and just before I won I found the secret-level special.

EDIT2:


And I still can't update the file here on forum, because it keeps throwing error 413 "request entity is too large". What I'm doing wrong?

I see you've managed to upload another file just fine. I got the same error message as you when I uploaded this file, so it must be something specific to this file. You could try updating it by replacing it with a .rar or .7zip file instead of a .zip. Or remove the BMP files from the archive to reduce the size in half. I opened map01242.bmp by the way, and noticed this screenshot was made when the map was corrupt. If you haven't used the 'fix map' feature on adikted on this map since then you really should because this map is much more likely to crash now.

alexsa2015sa
November 30th, 2017, 14:31
EDIT2:

I see you've managed to upload another file just fine. I got the same error message as you when I uploaded this file, so it must be something specific to this file. You could try updating it by replacing it with a .rar or .7zip file instead of a .zip. Or remove the BMP files from the archive to reduce the size in half. I opened map01242.bmp by the way, and noticed this screenshot was made when the map was corrupt. If you haven't used the 'fix map' feature on adikted on this map since then you really should because this map is much more likely to crash now.

The 01242 bmp is outdated (I literally can't run such broken maps, due to severe lag and one instance of instacrashing; I regenerated it at once after taking the screen). As for file, I'll probably reupload it here once I'm certain there's nothing too drastic to improve upon (like your Reveal Region suggestion, or the eye which is consistently wrong, which are kind of a big deal) to avoid all trouble if the new upload retains the erratic behaviour.



I accidentally won though, in a way that was not suppose to happen. At some point I think some white imps spawned, but I had walled of my dungeon. Because I was not yet near those imps to kill them, they tunneled into the white heart room from the east instead. I possessed an imp, quickly claimed to dirt past the guard post with the reaper on it and could kill the heart without fighting any enemies. I think I would otherwise have won easily as well, because my thieves where about to turn into knights and my fairies had rebound and that is a killer-combo.

Well... Of course I fixed this now. I think, if you've stepped one step into the library before actually attacking the heart, you'd be surprised how nasty those Reapers can be against Fairies. Nothing impossible, and I've put a fairly obvious warning about this ambush, (don't remember if it was there in first version), but I lost some of lv 7-9 knights to them - that party is stronger than the one final level has (not the level 7, though, and that one still probably could benefit from having more Reapers to kill).

Also, concerning the first secret level: is it any fun? It may sometimes spawn the boulder-tripping Bug incorrectly so you're locked out from the southern maze in green, and I've no clue how to fix it beyond adding more bugs. The last part might also require some tweaking as it has a potential deathtrap if you don't anticipate the first orc staring right at your face, and killing him manually sn't supposed to happen.

YourMaster
November 30th, 2017, 23:50
I just played the secret level, and yes, it's fun. I liked it because it seemed totally impossible, but I managed to complete it after all. It took me quite long to realize I had the heal spell though. In fact, I had already completed the level without it before I remembered I had it and I replayed it because even though I managed to kill the wizard I lost my thief and could not kill the heart so my reward was a lvl7 monk or witch instead of a lvl5 knight. So I played it again and healed up before clearing out the final room.
First I ran my thief east, managed to avoid boulders and somehow gotten all enemies killed with the boulder and taking out the western heart. The eastern part was easier, I again used my thief to run past the boulders and enemies because I would not want to use a slow monk to do so. Killing the eastern heart got me the witch, and I tried using that to go north but did not find any way to do so. Again I settled on my the low level warlocks and running, dying on the gas traps. It dawned on me that a lvl10 thief might make it, and he did. Healed up and took out the final room for victory. Clever map.

What happens with the bugs, where do they spawn and does that mean the boulders aren't triggered? Have you tried spawning the beetles right on top of the boulders instead?

As for the corrupt map - usually it doesn't run for me at all either. But sometimes it does and crashes much later, perhaps depending on the corruption somehow. And I guess you're trying to find out how many versions you can fit between 0.99 and 1? :p

YourMaster
December 5th, 2017, 00:15
Well, I attempted the fourth level and lost, despite loading my saved game a few times.
The first time I died it was when Green attacked me quite soon, when most of my creatures were still at lvl3 or lower. He easily crushed me so I loaded my save to wall in fast. But as I had not yet completed research of the workshop and had access to just the gold right at my starting location I had to dug out a bit to the small pockets of gold east. Green kept breaching me there, so I had to reload a few times. One time green breached me right before he was defeated by white I guess, so then I had a huge hero invasion I had no chance of stopping. Finally I settled with three small pockets of gold to the east, and green completely dug up against my walls so I could not claim any more gold east. Somehow green did not die from white anymore. I decided to dig east to the larger pocket of gold and was quickly invaded by white and many tentacles. I managed to defeat the initial waves and dig the patch of gold east, and use an invisible imp to claim the central temple to stop the tentacle parties.
I noticed that green was attacked, but managed to barely survive before white decided to fully focus on me, and I was quickly and hopelessly overwhelmed. I managed to train my knight up to lvl 8 and had 8 giants of various levels but my other creatures were hardly trained because I did not have the gold for it. Several parties with the lvl10 giant and mistress came at the same time, with more to follow and I had nothing to stop it. I guess next time I have to start by walling off large parts of the map so that I have some gold to mine and time to train.

EDIT: I tried this level again today and decided to give up and skip it. This time I walled in, I just managed this before green tried to kill me and in the process kill himself. This meant the entire north was overrun by heroes, to the east there's the hero fortress I have access to, and in the center there are Tentacles. I think there's something wrong with the tentacles, because they haven't been attacked but keep spawning indefinitely. This caused the level to hit the creature limit. This is also the reason why I said 'fuck *t', since I wanted to create an army of knights but the thieves refused to promote due to the creature limit. With just the handful of units available to me, I see no way to take either the east or the north.
Also, the bridge can't be build once you sell it. Looking in the script, you only make the bridge available again if it is available, which doesn't work of course. I also noticed there part of the script depends on if horny is alive, but you've also hidden a horny on the map that will confuse the script. (and throw out lots of heroes).

EDIT2: I played quite a bit from lvl 5 - the water level - but it quickly became unplayable for me due to the pathfinding bug. On my side my imps refused to mine any gold, and not sure but I think something was wrong on the enemy side as well because my thieves were already trained to lvl10 and I still only fought some lvl4 skeletons and ghosts, besides the parties stuck on the guard posts of course.
I also noticed you can't build a guard-post on this level, my guess is that you don't want me walling off, but you can use the temple instead.
Eventually my game froze. On to the next map I suppose, too bad.

troco
January 9th, 2018, 21:26
this is exact copy of message i wrote to YourMaster, and He encouraged me to post this in the thread:

"here's what happened to me when i destroyed nearly whole north part of the map (2 "lieutenants": mistresses + vampires)
https://ibb.co/c2VZ46

guess there is some script error... i lost like 5 hours of playin

infinite waves of hell hounds + game slow down becacuse of amassed objects, im shocked that it didnt crash, i tried to defend myself for quite a while with my 9x fairies + 10 knights + 11 dwarves, all lvl 10 or sumthin close to 10), then i tried to attack the 3rd lieteunant's dungeon, but it was impossible - there were about 3 hell hounds lvl 6-10 + horde of 1lvls + 4lvl horny and horde of 1lvls still attacckin my dungeon (but also they were scripted to attack gem tile in the north, which i recovered few whiles sooner"

YourMaster
March 17th, 2018, 14:44
As an intermezzo I played Enchantree (https://keeperklan.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=131), again a good map but after a few defeats I have given up.

After that I continued with the 6th level of this campaign, where I had to get 5 knights. I liked the map, even though I hardly noticed anything about the knights. When I killed the second keeper it said 'good enough'. It's again a difficult map, and I think I had to reload a saved game about 10 times, but I think this one is a bit easier than some of the others in the campaign, especially at the end.
This map thought me that Samurai aren't as powerful as I thought they were, and that Warlocks are quite a bit more dangerous than I though. I played with a new version of Unofficial where meteors explode, and that helps the mistresses get quite a few additional shots off. I managed to transfer a lvl10 knight to the next level,....

kix
August 8th, 2020, 10:39
I decided to give the campaign a shot since it was included in the new 0.4.8 which I installed. It's been more than two years but perhaps the creator will read this feedback.

Dwarfton
Makes a very good first impression of the campaign. Very creative level design, good story, properly written objectives etc. Even the scripts are properly commented - a thing I dont do. I did the mistake of choosing the tactic to push as soon and as fast as possible because I expected it to go easier if I claim some of their rooms early. Right on the start I tunneled into a few mid level trolls but I managed to survive. Then the pushing was straightforward, however my main attackers - fairies started to die one by one slowly to the point I had to rely on boulders. I built rooms in blind tunnels to lure the orcs and trolls to destroy it and placed boulders nearby. The only unit capable of fighting was high level knight. I admit I loaded a few times because he got killed by boulders and had no more ressurects left. The map got repetive after first hour and dragged on for way too long with nothing new happening. The map is really well made - I love digging and finding secrets. It lacks decoration items but I believe you removed them because of thing limit.
Overall very good map with right difficulty. Maybe too difficult for first level but still fine. I also liked the idea of playing as a good keeper - like a Good campaign but actually good.

Sparkleforest
Contrary to what YourMaster said, to me this level played like the first one. Except I chose a different tactic - to turtle, train and frameskip until I have decent army. Then go on and start claiming the rooms. Also dragged on for way too long. Still decent map.

Abbeystone
I really liked this level. Played it for almost two hours before the waves became unbearable and I lost and had to restart. Not sure whether you intended I play it this way, but I came from west, this time did NOT open my dungeon to water, so the blue keeper was handling the waves. I used the one slab of bridge to claim some parts of the dungeon and built guard posts so I do not expose myself to heroes - the locked doors kept them from me. Mined the gold from everywhere I could and hand placed it into treasure room. Soon the blue keeper was defeated which resulted in level lose but I loaded the game helped him out - my army was now much stronger than his. For that reason I opened and cleared the rest of dunegon, found locate hidden world special and won.

EDIT:
I've played a few more levels and decided to stop testing it because I didnt enjoy it anymore. The beginning was very promising but the levels feel very similar and are not going anywhere. I felt like I was doing the same thing every level, even fought the same parties, using the same tactics and at the end I got something new like new creature or prison but that was after 5 or 6 hours of gameplay. Not a very enjoyable gameplay either: going room by room, clearing guards, waiting to destroy magic doors, clear those 150 traps on the map. You want to posses a samurai and run through a hall of boulders so you don't have to frameskip until the boulder collapses? Fuck you, here is a WoP trap after every boulder so it pushes you back to boulder - just do it 1 by 1 for additional 20 minutes! Each level! Yeah no thanks. It's a well made campaign and lots of effort went into this but I hate doing the same things over and over.

Professor Evil
March 21st, 2024, 23:27
Hi, first post ever and I sorta doubt anyone will even see it because as far as I can tell this campaign is old as balls. But basically I have 1 major question about level 6 (I think?) knight's castle. Is the hatchery supposed to be locked?

watler253
March 23rd, 2024, 03:49
Hi, first post ever and I sorta doubt anyone will even see it because as far as I can tell this campaign is old as balls. But basically I have 1 major question about level 6 (I think?) knight's castle. Is the hatchery supposed to be locked?

You will get more answers about this campaign if you join the keeper klan discord.

Regarding this question, I don't remember much this campaign so can't really tell, do you think there is maybe a bug?