Helpful Hints for Necromancer Mission 4: Thoughts and Intentions

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*Spoilers!*

This mission can be extremely frustrating because you start with one bare town and no mines in its zone of control. The CPU sports four factions, all allied against you, and several powerful heroes with strong armies from Day 1. How do you conquer them all?

The good news is that you don't have to beat them all. The basic strategy is to pick your battles, run or hide from the strongest enemies, and gradually make yourself strong enough to take the one objective town. For this, it will help if your hero Adar-Malik was previously leveled up and has strong Necromancy and Prime Magic abilities as well as the Summon Elementals spell. However, there are probably other ways of leveling the playing field, but I found that summoning stacks of elementals helped me to pull through many of the toughest battles with most of my army intact.

Step 1: Clear the area around your town. You should be able to clear every fight except the bird-thing within the first few days. Don't forget the little nook south of the bird. You can try Malassa's Temptation here, but I didn't have much success. FOR YOUR TOWN, focus FIRST on building just enough to build your town hall, then city hall. You will have to build a few other buildings, but as soon as these become available, stop building and start saving for the income upgrade. It's the only income you've got.

Step 2: Take whatever army you can muster within that first week and defeat that bird. Make sure to save! Use Summon Elementals to spare your troops. Push to the west (left) and find the city of Zayid. It should be undefended or lightly defended. You need this city, not for its troops or gold per se, but for its mines. Do not invest in it because you won't hold it. Soon strong enemies will come your way and you will have to flee. Build the Town Portal in your main city so that you can use Instant Recall if you're being hunted and can't get to the sanctuary. In fact, if the CPU builds Town Portal in Zayid, burn the city down until it goes away.

Step 3: At this point, you have options: you can head back toward your main city, and turn south about halfway. There is a path up to an oasis-type area with a fort and a few mines. If you can take the fort, do it. The other option is to stay in the center of the map you can see so far (near the stables and sanctuary) and snipe weak enemy heroes for XP and necromancy troops.

This is your life for the remainder of the map: sniping, building up, losing and retaking the city or fortress. Using this strategy, I was able to defeat every powerful hero except Jondari (or w/e her name is). Her spells are extremely powerful, so it's best to just avoid her.

Step 4: When you have an army strong enough to take a fully-developed city, you can cross the stream of water to the left of the sanctuary and head left. When you get to the cutscene about the locked gates, head north and attack the city you find at the quest marker on the mini-map.

Your final mission is to head south (through those now-open gates) until you can go no further. Do not enter the green spirit gate; just keep walking through the green fog until you are stopped.

Congratulations! You win--and yet you lose. Spoiler!