I can't win as Azkaal!

[item]

So I've started the Inferno campaign, no problems. I use what I've always used, earth magic.

After a whole map of flawless victories I come to the last hero I need to defeat. With my massive army it's easy enough, then I'm surprised, I'm now playing as Azkaal.

I look at this army and I'm already seeing how much the odds are stacked against me. A stack of cerberus with 1120, with them, over 3000 enemies I have to deal with. So I read everything about Azkaal and find his abilities are pretty weak to say the least.

After getting my ass handed to me I think, well I guess I was supposed to lose. So I click "close" instead of restart and and I'm met with the tally screen and that's it I was simply beaten, try again. So I try again.

It's impossible.

So I look up youtube videos and realize my mark of consumption is only 100% instead of 200% like the video makers have.

So my question is, What the hell happened to the 200%? I did switch my affinity to magic, do I NEED to be might and equip that dynasty weapon or something?

I find nothing online about this game and nobody refers to the weaker mark of consumption.

[Space Wizard]

Restart the mission and set enemy AI at easiest difficulty. I had the same problem when I decided to replay inferno on hardest difficulty. I smacked demons left and right without problems... well until that 1120 cerberus bit my Azkaal ass every time.

So yeah developers kinda forgot to balance the final fight and there is literally no way how to win it no matter what you do.

[Tiny&Purple]

i had no problem doing it on hard. but, i don't think i had a huge army. just didn't need to. so maybe thats why. just play the stage fast and you'll win with Azkaal

[Imperium]

Its a tricky fight, you have to keep kiting them, positioning your self in range of only the weakest of mobs, and Azkall is quick often going twice for every turn of his enemies, use that to your advantage.

He also retaliates, like any demon, at everyone who ever hit him, so kiting and moving to enemies who can hurt you least, retaliating and hurting everyone on the map would have your enemies dead in no time, I have done mine on highest difficalty, and it took good 3 tries to figure it all out.

Oh and cerberus is a ♥♥♥♥♥, hurts wayyy too much, avoid him and lower his numbers at range for as long as you can, cant really win head on and have enough hp for the rest...

[item]

Thaks for the tips guys. Knowing it was just my difficulty settings and that it is beatable helped. After 3 hours of trying I finally won with 3210 life, I also got the reap what you sow achievement which made it that much sweeter.

[Imperium]

Grats :D

[QLDCoyote]

This fight is enormously frustrating on Hard difficulty. It takes EXTREME luck to win on hard mode, and it's not a strategic fight at all. If you get unlucky once or twice during fight, it's over. MoC was nerfed from 200% to 100%, and also that you can't cast IB on dogs anymore ( because the AI never puts them next to other mobs, and if it does, it will be next to weak mobs, and only for 1 turn ). I enjoy hard fights but I dread roulette type fights, where strategy gets put on the backburner and whether you win or lose is 100% up to the dice. ( well, you can ensure you lose every time by playing bad, but even the best players will lose this every time if they are not extremely lucky ).

At one point I had a decent strategy that involved IB on dogs then move bottom left corner during first turn. The AI would then plant a gated stack of cerb next to me, which forced the real cerb to move north next to the ranged. IB on cerb pack would quickly kill ranged (again, this was up to luck, because if it hit one specific mob it would hit two, otherwise just one, etc.. ). I had about 22000 HP left at the end of that fight with just cerbs left, there was only the stack of cerb left and me with 22000 HP. I LOST... because the cerb got lucky and morale twice in a row, decimating me for 12000HP per turn with no possible escape because they also moved twice. The cerbs catched up every time because of it moving twice per turn just like me.

Ideally, you need to hit the dog pack once at least at the very start of the fight, this allows your retaliation to hit them every time from then on, but this means the ranged will decimate you. This tactic I ended up with 300 dogs, and myself dead. You can also decide to kill the gates every turn ( you'll spend pretty much doing nothing else than killing gates while you get hammered ) which will see you dead about 15 turns later.

There is no way this map can be done unless you are extremely lucky. It's not strategy, it's pure luck. In order to win, you need to ensure that the dogs are not getting morale too often, hope the dogs walk next to another stack so you can hit them with IB, but they never do as the AI isn't stupid enough to place their Ace of Spades (cerb pack) next to anywhere they will be hit. You want to make sure they don't get lucky 8K bites, mobs don't get morale too often and don't move away from blocking position, ranged not getting lucky 3K crits. ie: Luck is too big a factor in this fight and the fight takes forever you can't reset it either.

For anyone not wanting to spend 10-20 hours hoping to get lucky that one time, save yourself the effort and just get the CE tables and do this on god mode. It's not worth spending 20 hours of your life trying to win the jackpot, playing russian roulette in a strategy game. Silly Ubi!

Here's the link to the CE tables that have godmode for the latest 2.1.1.0 version:
The thread: forum.cheatengine.org/viewtopic.php?t=543621
The download: http://forum.cheatengine.org/download.php?id=94271

Uninstall after Azkaal ! :)

[Miklotov]

It's a bit hard until you understand what you have to do. Then it becomes simple. Just follow these steps:

1: Avoid the cerberi at ALL COSTS. That is pretty easy to do since you have higher, unobstructed movement and act twice in a turn.

2: Use mark of consumption on the higher damage stacks( Juggs lacerators and cerberi). Don't bother with the other stacks, they will not be a problem to you esp the ranged ones.

3: Use Boundless Hate whenever you can.

4: Let every stack hit you once except for the cerberi. That is important since your damage will come mostly from your hit-all retaliation.

5: Attack stacks physically until you've stolen around 60-70 luck. That is the vital part that most people miss, you need high luck because you can critical on your retaliations, severely increasing your damage output.

6: After you've done all this, just defend whenever you can't use boundless hate and let your critical hit-all retaliation do the work for you. It doesn't pay off to attack a single target, defending is a much wiser choice as it decreases damage taken from all sources. Remember: you're still moving around to avoid cerberi( Gated stacks help you do that as they can block the cerberi from reaching you).

7: After other stacks are dead or too weak to deal significant damage, go for the cerberi. It will be a bit weaker from all those casts of boundless hate and you can easily solo him since you'll be criting 3x in a turn( 2x your own attack, 1x on retaliation). It should go down in 3-4 turns.

I don't find that control ability very useful, never saw a good use for it unless you can make cerberi be attacked. Still, you can easily win without ever using it. Harder difficulty does make it a bit harder and more luck dependant, but it's by no means rocket science, follow these steps and you should win without having much trouble.

[Titler]

Originally posted by Miklo:

I don't find that control ability very useful, never saw a good use for it unless you can make cerberi be attacked. Still, you can easily win without ever using it. Harder difficulty does make it a bit harder and more luck dependant, but it's by no means rocket science, follow these steps and you should win without having much trouble.

I'm struggling to beat this so far, as I'm just not getting the space to stay away from the Cerebi, as the first thing the AI does is clone them... but you can use the Control ability to use the cerebi to destroy two of his own stacks, if you can line them up correctly, which then also wastes the Cerebi's own turn so giving you a breather of some kind. Unfortunetly every time I get down to just that stack left, he refuses to move into the corners, staying near the middle so he bites me where ever I run too... just yet another poorly designed fight sadly.

[tFighterPilot]

Never attack the cloned armies. It's pointless. The control ability is pretty useless as well.

[Les Grossman]

Control ability is essential vs. Cerberus when close to allies, you almost winning fight with this. Overall there were many threads about this fight even on Ubi forums, this is toughest fight in M&MHVI on hard difficulty, though it's still beatable.

[TuTeVs]

This Fight is All about Luck to be honest And it shouldn't be. Whatever strategy you use it all comes down to who had the most luck.

[Sam]

I recently beat it easily on Easy, but haven't played it on Hard. I had at least 1/3 of my life left, if not more (but slightly less than half). According to ApplesandOranges, the key is to focus on the Cerberus. See here: http://lparchive.org/Might-Magic-Heroes-VI/

To paraphrase his advice: Use boundless hate whenever possible, mark units not close to death for blood if you aren't going to take damage from the Cerberus stack (Cerberus stack should be first one marked for blood), force Cerberus to attack a neighboring stack whever you can if you can't use boundless hate, and try boxing yourself into a corner so other troops will block the "large" Cerberus stack from getting adjacent to you.

[TuTeVs]

Well on hard difficulty you can't focus the cerberi to be honest they are 1000+ and deal around 4k dmg without luck so you just have to have them tag you so u retaliate always on them and run around the battlefield while casting spells hoping for them to be unlucky and you to be lucky.

[HereticPriest]

I just finally yesterday night beat that fight after trying for 6 hours distributed over the whole weekend. A real pain that was. Teleporting north-east as the 3rd action which lead the dogs in front of the shooters did the trick for me finally. I could then repeatedly frenzy them on the shooters pretty early which reduced suffered damage a lot. Of course i also used the AoE spell whenever possible, otherwise defend a lot. I did not use the second mark of consumption ability at all, as it didnt seem to do anything actually.

[Qiox]

My first ever youtube upload was a lets play of this mission on hard. Was annoyed by how many people in the Ubi forums were saying it was impossible to beat. Might hero, no dynasty weapon used and no dynasty traits selected either. I wanted to show it could be done under the most difficult setup.

And I beat it easily. Over the years, after various patches people would post a comment saying it was now impossible. So I played it again each time and beat it just as easily in 1 try.

It is not based on luck. The moves you make matter a great deal. If you keep losing you are making the wrong choices.

Doing the same things each time you try again and expecting a different result (I'll be lucky this time!) is the mistake.

If I didn't hate this game so much (bs scripted AI that does not actually play the same game as you making every mission stupidly easy), then I would do another recording right now.

But it just is not worth the time and effort.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlRRNK1bz6E

That's the original recording made when the game first came out. Same tactics still work now.