"Rat King" Mission

[Pathfinder]

I am at my end for patience, this mission is killing this game for me. I've tried looking up guides and everything for it and yet I still get killed at the start, as if suddenly all the guides are null and void. Didn't complete the Rafnir mission if it matters, and why would it as i'll have to come back to this if i want to advance. I feel this is such terrible game design as your not even given a chance to get a building up before all the peasant killers show up. Am I the only one stuck on this mission?

Edit: Surprisingly still getting posts here despite this being posted in 2016 (though i'll admit 2016 me was an @$$).

I've long since beaten Majesty 2 and its expansions so if any came here for help here's the breakdown. Rat King and Fafnir are your skillgate missions with Rat King punishing you for the mentality of building around your castle and forcing you to build away from it (about a Market and halfs worth), be it South East or South West. Slam down Ranger's Guild, Market+Health Potions, and a Tower to help collect taxes from your isolated buildings. From there Cleric and Warrior guilds to keep your heroes alive and give you bit of a sturdier frontline. With your tax collectors safe and economy going you can move to stabilize the area around your castle with towers. Start with one corner and only build one at a time, and expand with a blacksmith as you go. Once the towers are up you've stabilized and can then proceed as normal with expansion till you win.
Good Luck Your Majesty!

[biochimera]

Just played it again, to see it for myself. What I did was build my marketplace SE of the palace, rogue's guild between the south sewer hole and the palace and a ranger's guild between the palace and the eastern sewer hole, so the three were forming a lop-sided "v" on the southern and eastern sides of the palace. Pump out all rangers and rogues, research healing potions. Research poison oil and poisoning at rogue's guild. Change taxmen so they only go to buildings at 100 gold and return at 100 gold. Start building guard tower just south of the eastern sewer hole, alongside the ranger's guild, wait for it to be finished. When enough money gained build another ranger's guild alongside the market to the east. Pump out all rangers, upgrade the guild, get accurate shot, look to build another tower near the south sewer hole. Start exploring south, find the two graveyards far to the south that pump out skeletal archers, destroy, build your first trading post on the post south of your palace, upgrade it to level 2. Build a rogue's guild just north of the first ranger's guild, just south of the bear den. When it is built upgrade it and research the next rogue ability. Build statue of king near marketplace, preferably in a small little gap between buidlings. Upgrade guard towers when able, one at a time.

By now your heroes should be pretty strong, have potions and can handle the rat swarms. Build mage's guild on the SW corner of your palace, or somewhere west but near your palace. Upgrade if it's getting hit hard, otherwise leave it. Get your magic bazaar up in your safe southeast area. DO NOT BOTHER WITH MAGES. They are too weak and will easily get swarmed and killed by the rats. Consider your mage's guild, with it's auto-repair as a kind of tank building. Get a cleric's guild up near the marketplace, pump out clerics, research the healing majesty's spell, upgrade, get holy bolt or whatever it's called. Build a blacksmith, upgrade armor but not weapons. Save up for decent protection flags (at least 500 gold) plus enough for warrior guild and tower, plop both guild and tower NW corner between the sewer hole and the palace (If there is a peasant building there, just let the rats demolish it). Put protection flag on tower, not the guild - the tower aids defense when it's up. Pump out warriors, build another cleric's guild near the palace and the warrior's guild. Upgrade your warrior's guild to level 2 ASAP - warriors are pathetic DPS without crushing blow, and barely passable with it. Now look to upgrade your palace and marketplace.

By now you should easily be on the front foot. Get up a dwarven settlement, build dwarven towers in areas they will be beneficial, upgrade one of your other guilds to max (preferably one on the front lines) with preference being clerics, warriors, elves, rangers. rogues then dwarves. Get all abilities, scout around, get another cleric's guild up, and now that there is enough defense for them if you want to get the mages up, but make sure they have access to their abilities first. Only other thing to look out for with this mission is the bearmen tree just south of the port, with a bearman patrolling. They hurt. Put up a decent bounty (500 for the bearmen, 1000 for the tree) and have at least 6 elves ready, with all their available talents, potions and some experience already. Put a protect flag with at least 600 gold on the caravan when it's up, and then 2k or so on the Rat King, but by the time it's time to finish him your heroes will pummel him easily.

TLDR version: Some rules:
1. Start off with only a marketplace, ranger's guild and rogue's guild, all built near each other to the southeast alongside the borders of the palace. As there is no mana users there is no need to research mana potions.

2. Rogues and rangers do great damage against animals, rangers are weak against undead though, requiring at least the ability from the level 2 ranger's guild to be decent. Both are wimps though, which is helpful. Poison is great against rats, too.

3. Make the southeast safe, and build the beginning bulk of your base out there. Only build your first trading outpost when the two graveyards to the south which pump out skeletal archers are destroyed.

4. 2 ranger's guilds and 2 rogue's guilds will have enough firepower to deal with the swarm, so long as towers are covering the sewer holes near them, and they are relatively concentrated. From there, build up, enhance, get the other guilds up. Build the wizard's guild in a place where it can soak up damage, but mages are weak and expensive, so don't bother with them. Build the magic bazaar in the southeast for money, but do not research anything in it.

5. Once you're strong enough, head north. There's another trading post NE of your start, requires quite a bit of cleaning out. Another west as well from memory, didn't look out there this time around. The only other major threat is the bearmen, as stated above.

[Janthis]

Same here, any building I try to put up gets destroyed before it's completed. I'm starting to think it's a bug. Starting to regret buying this game.

[SkyLance]

I did this mission completely opposite to how I did most of them.

Normally I build 2 guardhouse at the start in every mission, then a hall of lords or some type of guild and carry on from there. I even did that for the Dragon mission, only I quickly learned not to build anything too close to my palace. I used the palace to soak up the Dragons attacks, although I had to use the guard flag on my palace sometimes because of the constant serpent attacks (the destruction of their nests quickly became a top priority).

Anyway, for the Rat King mission I noticed my plebs were butchered before they built anything at all since buildings take ages to go up, so I decided to build a wizard guild instead. I know, wizards die easily, but the wizard guild is self building and it goes up very fast. I didn't do it for the wizards, I did it for the towers and the fact both the guild and the towers auto-construct themselves.

After the Wizard guild was complete (build it away from the sewer grates) I threw 2 towers down and paid the 200g to activate them, they slaughter any rats that pop up really fast. This gave me a chance to pump out 3 wizards for some back up, the rats are usually too busy trying to attack buildings to bother with them. Then I constructed afew guardhouses and other guilds as my money ticked up.

You can put the money into guard houses straight after the towers if you don't want the wizards first, but you have to be fast. You can't keep throwing 200g at those towers for long due to the peasent houses and tax collectors getting wrecked.

I found the usual -and often suggested- guard house strategy a complete disaster on the Rat King mission, ended quickly on my first two tries.

I found the above was a much better strategy, the Wizard guild and towers build themselves so the peasents can faff about acting as decoys and distracting the rats.

Hope it helps.

Edit: Wait until you're ready before exploring the map, because the other creature dens (once discovered) will spawn enemies that can be very annoying if you still haven't secured your base. Especially the den near the port with it's level 20 BearMen spawns.

[RendCycle]

This mission is just plain impossible. Tried everything except hacking... and nothing worked. Either I was able to build a Ranger's guild and Marketplace but my men don't want to defend the Castle so it gets destroyed OR I can't build anything at all because the Rats spawn too fast and destroys whatever I build/create. I wish they placed an easy way to cheat for those who want to. I did not buy this game to get stressed out! I hate rogue-like games (damn lazy developers) and old school games like this that is so damn difficult. Not sure if the developers even tested out this mission. I enjoyed the first Majesty but this one is just terrible with regards to level difficulty. :-(

[Darth Ennui]

I start with Hall of lords and Marketplace, then hire two lords as soon as possible. They manage to protect the settlement until you can build some guilds (personally, I prefer warriors first, as they are harder to kill).

[jballar]

I am replaying the campaign and played this mission yesterday. I wanted to play without using the hall of lords. This mission has a lot of animals and a lot of undead. Rangers have a bonus with animals and clerics have bonuses with undead.

I started by putting a clerics guild & rangers guild to the south west of the castle. If you see the royal sewer to the left of the castle, draw an imaginary line down. Same with the royal sewer to south of the castle, draw an imaginary line to the left. Place the clerics guild at the intersection, and the rangers guild to the left of it. then place a guard town below and just to the right of the clerics guild. After trying several things, this seems to work the best. After they are built, get the heroes, and upgrade both guilds and the guard tower. get the attack upgrade for both guilds.

After that, then build the marketplace just to the left of the guard tower. The tax collectors will go back to the guard tower and not the castle if it is closer. If you do before, it will be destroyed. Do not have the heroes do anything until the marketplace is built. They will level up quickly because of all the creatures.

After that, build how you want to the south and west of your buildings. I built a second ranger and cleric guilds followed by warrior and rouge guilds. Start to place guard towers near some of the royal sewer entrances, BUT do not have too far from your buildings. You will probably have to put a defense flag while the tower is under construction. Be slow so your heroes can build up their levels. Periodically, you will need to put a defense flag on the castle because it will be over run by rats and such.

If it is advantageous to destroy a den or crypt, then do it, otherwise do not overstretch yourself. I find that the heroes will hang around their guild most of the time, if not going after flags. they will automatically go after any creatures in their area, so I typically place the guilds fairly close, but not right next to the sewer entrances.

The other bit of advise, do NOT go to the dock to get the cheese until you have cleared out most of the dens and have the ability to kill the rat king. In my typical set of heroes, I will have 2 dwarf guilds. Ironically, by the time I was able to build dwarf towers, I did not need them. the heroes and the guard towers soaked up most of the rats, so the castle was protected.

Hope this helps

[Sharem]

Originally posted by SkyLance:

I did this mission completely opposite to how I did most of them.

Normally I build 2 guardhouse at the start in every mission, then a hall of lords or some type of guild and carry on from there. I even did that for the Dragon mission, only I quickly learned not to build anything too close to my palace. I used the palace to soak up the Dragons attacks, although I had to use the guard flag on my palace sometimes because of the constant serpent attacks (the destruction of their nests quickly became a top priority).

Anyway, for the Rat King mission I noticed my plebs were butchered before they built anything at all since buildings take ages to go up, so I decided to build a wizard guild instead. I know, wizards die easily, but the wizard guild is self building and it goes up very fast. I didn't do it for the wizards, I did it for the towers and the fact both the guild and the towers auto-construct themselves.

After the Wizard guild was complete (build it away from the sewer grates) I threw 2 towers down and paid the 200g to activate them, they slaughter any rats that pop up really fast. This gave me a chance to pump out 3 wizards for some back up, the rats are usually too busy trying to attack buildings to bother with them. Then I constructed afew guardhouses and other guilds as my money ticked up.

You can put the money into guard houses straight after the towers if you don't want the wizards first, but you have to be fast. You can't keep throwing 200g at those towers for long due to the peasent houses and tax collectors getting wrecked.

I found the usual -and often suggested- guard house strategy a complete disaster on the Rat King mission, ended quickly on my first two tries.

I found the above was a much better strategy, the Wizard guild and towers build themselves so the peasents can faff about acting as decoys and distracting the rats.

Hope it helps.

Edit: Wait until you're ready before exploring the map, because the other creature dens (once discovered) will spawn enemies that can be very annoying if you still haven't secured your base. Especially the den near the port with it's level 20 BearMen spawns.

I actually managed to beat the level following this strategy. Thanks SkyLance! :)

[Janthis]

I found the dragon mission even worse than the Rat King mission. The dragon and those serpents literally swarm your castle and destroy everything before you have a chance to build your first building.

[Drachma]

Here, this glitch-fix helped me:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/73020/discussions/0/458604254440454046/

[Travitar]

For fun I just beat that level with a single guild, a mages guild. Might give some people some ideas on strategy.

[SKull]

The best way to handle the beginning is easily to build a wizards guild first, away from any sewer entrances. Get three wizards out; they are good vs both skeletons and rats, then research the fireball. Wait until you have 650 gold, then build a marketplace and a guard tower close to the wizards guild. That should give you the income to expand to the other guilds and more guard towers, and then the mission is pretty easy compared to some of the others.
The problem is that the peasants don't get the peace to build early on and you waste money on buildings that never finish. But the wizards guild builds and repairs itself, so problem solved. The peasants can fortify peasant huts and the castle while the wizards get to work instead, and then get back to building once you have some space.
To make sure the wizards don't die before they reach level five and get their defensive shield, just avoid destroying the two ancient graveyards to the south east, and obviously the two bear dens. The surge of mobs from those when they are destroyed will usually be too much for wizards before they reach at least level five.
Apparently you can finish the level with just a wizards guild, as well as towers, equipment and income obviously. It's the secret weapon for this level and is very OP.

[Janthis]

The wizards will ignore the monsters and just go loot the treasure chests nearby, then get killed in one hit by monsters while trying to run away. Game is untested, bugged, and broken. Done by a Russian developer who had no knowledge or respect for the original Majesty. Don't bother with this. End of story.

[SKull]

Originally posted by ionutz1280:

The wizards will ignore the monsters and just go loot the treasure chests nearby, then get killed in one hit by monsters while trying to run away. Game is untested, bugged, and broken. Done by a Russian developer who had no knowledge or respect for the original Majesty. Don't bother with this. End of story.

End of your extremely impatient and biased story maybe. People tell you how to do it and you respond by telling your story. Not really a very interesting conversation then is it?

[Janthis]

So you necroed this thread from a month ago just to tell me I'm not interesting? Good job.

[Slainpessimist]

Just finished it, I placed four towers around/close to the castle, if you put them near the sewer entrances they will get destroyed, but this way they will build. It's slow going at first because there is very little money coming in, but it's cirtainly doable.