Act 1 - Can not finish

[Chronoja]

I've played through the entirety of Act 1 twice now and on both occasions I reach the end of the map with the objective to "Capture the Imperial Town" but this simply impossible. There is a node guardian in the town which is invincible, there is no quest marker outside.

I have read off many issues, the enemy A.I. killing npcs, but as far as I can tell, no npc's are being killed, or at least none that I am aware of. If there is an important npc being killed I'd appreciate being told which one specifically. The one I am aware of is the demon hunter and mage in the at the first farm area, but these 2 I can guarantee remained alive.

The strangest thing so far though is that I was able to progress to Act 2 when the game glitched itself with the black hex problem. For whatever reason killing a normal enemy party that came from the capital while this glitch was active allowed me to proceed. Stupidly I did not save in act 2 because I didn't know it was going to become and issue, and so far my attempts to induce this glitch have failed.

Any help would be appreciated. I've gone so far as to mess around in the save files and scene settings but nothing I seem to change alters the fact that I can't trigger the ending sequence for Act 1.

[Chronoja]

Update: I finally managed to get into Act 2 again, but I literally have no idea how I managed it. I have spent hours and hundreds of turns standing outside the Empire capital just fighting each party that comes out of it and with no idea what made the last one so different, it triggered the ending cutscene.

I wish I had more sturdy advice to anyone else who encounters this. The only thing substantial that I changed was to go back to a save before I had tackled the 3 quests the necromancer gives you down the western side of the map (mage tower, spider man and the castle of the inquisition). Instead of doing all 3, I instead headed directly to the lowest one (castle of the inquisition) and then to find the amulet / vial of poison, from there I went straight over to the capital. So hopefully this information is useful to someone in the future.

[[D.O.W.] I Am Become Death]

Node Guardian is totally killable with an armor reduction rune btw. = D

[[D.O.W.] I Am Become Death]

Correction: Normal Node Guardian has 60 armor, and then gets an extra 40 for sitting in the capital. 100 armor = auto-block (as far as I can tell). I had a rune that reduced it 60 from a dungeon, that lasted 3 turns and he was almost dead, then I used a rust rune. Absolutely np, beat act 1 first try, act 2 going well. I think summons are the key most of the time, love the eternal guardians, just a little pricey, but thats no problem in the long run.

[Chronoja]

I wouldn't be relying on those armour runes by the way. The bug seems to be multiplicative, I remember assaulting a level 5 city in act 5 or 6 and some units had upwards of 200 armour, you aren't going to reduce that with a rune to defeatable levels. I highly recommend buying high damage runes since the magic damage is tested against the targets elemental resistance which doesn't get increased by the armour bug in towns, (it think it was that it adds 25x the level of the city, so level 4 and 5 add 100 and 125 on top of the units base armour)

Mages and any unit / summon with a non weapon attack will be, as you said, pretty valuable as well, but when you encounter a full city of 200+ armour units you might need those damage runes instead.

[Unknownpony]

You can buy in your castle like runes of earth element that deal earth dmg. Buy 10+ and you can beat any 100+ armorer.