Matthew Charlap, the Qurqirish Dragon, proudly presents journal entry
#338, as recorded by the cleric Aylyra:
The "The land or Arylia" originally discovered by Kalah
Date of land exploration: 18-September-2009
DESCRIPTION: Huge, two layer map of champion difficulty
Standard game map
Win condition: standard
Loss condition: lose the town “Arylion”
# OF PLAYERS: 1H random vs. 1C might vs. 4C (death, nature, order,
life). Random alignment was chaos.
COMMENTS: A well done map for a challenge, I actually found it went
too slowly at a few points. The first thing you will notice when you
start is that your starting town is completely empty. Obviously, you
need to build a tavern on day 1 so you can get a hero out. The next
thing you notice is that mines are well guarded – even the nearby
sawmills and ore pits. For my play, I determined that my starting hero
should be a thief. I quickly developed stealth so that I could get
some early experience – after building the fort, knew I wouldn’t have
the resources for my level 2 dwelling any time soon. On my first play,
at the end of week 2, a strong enemy force appeared and wiped me out.
Retrying the map, the player apparently went a different way, as I
didn’t have the encounter until much later. By the end of week 3, I
had developed my stealth skill enough to claim all the mines and
artifacts near my hometown, and so (with my dwellings finally built),
I hired a sorcerer to kill all the creatures my thief (now ranger,
thanks to combat) had slipped past, while the thief continued on his
own. The sorcerer would eventually become my defender of the home
area, while the ranger would lead my main force. Each section of the
map involves defeating a strong force of the appropriate alignment. In
some cases, you may need to build up your forces, in others you have
no choice but to do so (see “bugs and problems”) Going out of order
may actually help you, although in retrospect if I had gone in order
things would have been a LOT easier. The fact that the only neutral
town on the map happened to be death, with all the demonic troop
dwellings prebuilt helped me, as I could combine troops without the
undead penalty (and since death is allied with chaos, that meant no
morale penalties at all.). Actually, there are two neutral towns, but
one is designed to match your start town, so that wasn’t luck.
SOME TIPS: The early game will be tricky. If your starting town allows
it, I strongly suggest using a thief to help get started. If your
alignment is not chaos, then this likely won’t be your main hero, but
it will still help you a lot in the short run. This will also allow
you to claim several gold mines early on, so you never have a problem
with buying forces.
BUGS AND PROBLEMS: The last area doesn’t get unlocked until a timed
event at the end of month 10. Since I had already cleared most of the
rest of the map well before then, I was left to do cleanup work for a
while. This had the side effect of allowing me to replenish my force
to full strength. This may have been good, as defeating the death
player included taking out a large vampire stack. Fighting as defender
in a town with a large stack of venom spawn helped clear them out.
There is an inaccessible ore pit near this area as well. Finally, I
had ignored the nature enemy, as it only got unlocked when approached
(so I chose to leave it bottled up until I was secure from the
others). When I did defeat them, I found there were tens of thousands
of sprites, wolves, elves, and griffin available. Since my huge income
for most of the map, combined with the treasury, had me in possession
of millions of gold, I purchased 40,000 elves and played the rest of
the map with just them (although I added about 2500 griffin just
before the last battle, but that was because it took another month to
fully explore everything for my review, so I built up another millions
or two for spending). I don’t think this was intentional, but I
couldn’t find the reason for these quantities in the editor. The only
remaining forces after this point would have fallen easily to my main
force (30 black dragons, 20 devils, and a significant force of efreeti
and venom spawn)
SCORE: On my second try at advanced difficulty, I won on day 373 for
774 points and faerie dragon rating.
PROS: Nice map, with lots of good challenges. Don’t use the obviously
mistaken reinforcements from the nature town to keep the challenge up
– or leave it for last (as I did).
CONS: The quests often do not have reminder information or quest log
text that reminds you what to do. I lost a few week’s time on one of
those quests, as I couldn’t recall where I needed to go. It turns out
that my wait until the end of month 10 made the lost time immaterial,
but that doesn’t change the problem.
THE BOTTOM LINE: I felt that the underground layer was very sparse and
underused. I spent a moth exploring it, with only a few places of
interest. 6/10 for utilization, to earn *** on description. Otherwise,
the map looked fine, though nothing spectacular. The rest I discussed
above, and won’t repeat here. 8/10 on appearance, 8/10 on Story, 7/10
on Flavor, and 6/10 on scripting, to earn ***1/2 on entertainment.
Only the nature problem hurts the balance rating of the map, making it
too easy if encountered too early. 16/20 for balance, and 15/20 for
placement, to earn **** on design, for an overall rating of ***1/2 (66
out of 90).
---------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are my own. Any criticism is of the
map, not the designer (so if you are offended for some reason don’t
complain to me!
Comments and questions on the review are welcome,
simply reply to this message.
This map is available for download at Celestial Heavens:
www.celestialheavens.com
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