How to do first human campaign, third mission?

[Dunadd]

The first human campaign with the female hero, third mission where you're fighting Fae and undead wielders. How do you do it? I tried killing the smallest fae to get to claim the second and third settlements (easier than the horde of rats on the road), and building barracks upgraded with 'call the rangers' in 2 towns, marketplace and tavern in the third, rally point in starting town, some quarries and lumbermills. I can beat the first undead hero but take heavy losses doing it - and even if i'd taken less losses, can't see any way to get my main wielder back to defend the Southwest city before the first Fae Wielder army turns up. And just don't have enough troops to make two armies that could each fight a wielder army if I split them into two armies.

Whenever a loot option offered troops rather than gold, i took the troops. I made command and march my main abilities. But maybe that was a mistake as you seem very short of troops to recruit in this mission?

[Dunadd]

I managed to retake the two more westerly towns from the fae wielder (lost most of my swordsmen doing it despite relying mainly on rangers and trying to avoid too much melee). But then second fae wielder turns up at starting town and kills the male ranger guy defending it. Not sure how it would be possible to make up losses fast enough to survive wielder army attacks, even with third settlement upgraded to allow two medium build sites

[nanda.ag]

3rd Mission is quite easy don't take the 2nd town until your first town is build up and you amass a sizable army I think the enemy heroes appear when you take towns

[MERC]

Im stuck on that mission , myself . Ive beaten Marthok (name ?) and then the two fae weilders but having lost so much to them and to get back your knights and rangers etc , then that weilder from Loth comes in and comes straight after the main hero . i dont have enough recruited in the timeframe . bit much

[hisssan]

4th mission is even worse, heroes with 300 rats or something will regularly run on your base, convert it in one turn (and you will need 2+ turns to reconvert it). It is all a bit messy. But still quite fun for a Homm3 Clone. I guess they will have to tune the missions and skill quite a bit, still to balance things out.

[Seswatha]

I ended up running like a headless chicken between the flanks since I had all my army on the main wielder. Peradin (?) didn't have anything for most of the game. I've build barracks everywhere and had quite high command, the army was like 3-4 stacks of archers with upgraded capacity, 1-2 stacks swordsmen, and some bards in 2 slots for songs and mana, though it changed over time as I lost troops.

Merkoth (the first undead) was very easy, killed him without really losing anything I think by just shooting everything up with archers. The Fae chief was also easy and died in a similar fashion although he caught me off guard and managed to convert my large settlement which was a shame.

Fae caster was where the things got messy as she can chain lightning your archers killing like 15 per stack per cast, I've spread out and tried to kill off her mana generators (small fae stacks) asap, while blocking her melee with mine but I still lost a lot and I actually had to load an auto save to replay the battle. If you have a chance to get magic resist on level up, take it, that's my advice for both campaigns.

I managed to rebuild a decent army when the Baron showed up, he did not take any settlements and beelined to the north where I've met him. He was actually easier than the Fae caster, essence shield did mess up my archers but I had more swordsmen stacks now since I lost too many archers in the previous fight, so I just used them to provoke counter attacks from enemy melee to remove essence shield and then focused with archers.

From the timing perspective, I actually took the Loth town relatively late, and was sitting on 2 small towns with barrack + 2 farms build for a while clearing the western part of the map, so I'm not sure if taking it triggers the invasions earlier and makes things harder.

My build was:
Command 7
Guard 3
Archery 3
Prepared something
Order something (definitely not 3 but maybe 2, I got it offered quite late)
Power: Farsight

If you manage to get Creation and/or Magic resistance on levelups it makes things infinitely easier.

P.S. Mission 4 you get Stormspire with a decent build so you have a proper wielder even if your initial one still sucks.

[Dunadd]

Originally posted by Seswatha:

I ended up running like a headless chicken between the flanks since I had all my army on the main wielder. Peradin (?) didn't have anything for most of the game. I've build barracks everywhere and had quite high command, the army was like 3-4 stacks of archers with upgraded capacity, 1-2 stacks swordsmen, and some bards in 2 slots for songs and mana, though it changed over time as I lost troops.

Merkoth (the first undead) was very easy, killed him without really losing anything I think by just shooting everything up with archers. The Fae chief was also easy and died in a similar fashion although he caught me off guard and managed to convert my large settlement which was a shame.

Fae caster was where the things got messy as she can chain lightning your archers killing like 15 per stack per cast, I've spread out and tried to kill off her mana generators (small fae stacks) asap, while blocking her melee with mine but I still lost a lot and I actually had to load an auto save to replay the battle. If you have a chance to get magic resist on level up, take it, that's my advice for both campaigns.

I managed to rebuild a decent army when the Baron showed up, he did not take any settlements and beelined to the north where I've met him. He was actually easier than the Fae caster, essence shield did mess up my archers but I had more swordsmen stacks now since I lost too many archers in the previous fight, so I just used them to provoke counter attacks from enemy melee to remove essence shield and then focused with archers.

From the timing perspective, I actually took the Loth town relatively late, and was sitting on 2 small towns with barrack + 2 farms build for a while clearing the western part of the map, so I'm not sure if taking it triggers the invasions earlier and makes things harder.

My build was:
Command 7
Guard 3
Archery 3
Prepared something
Order something (definitely not 3 but maybe 2, I got it offered quite late)
Power: Farsight

If you manage to get Creation and/or Magic resistance on levelups it makes things infinitely easier.

P.S. Mission 4 you get Stormspire with a decent build so you have a proper wielder even if your initial one still sucks.

Can't get West because the road is blocked it says "now is not the time" when you try to go there, then blocks it.

Where is Stormspire? Can only find 3 settlements I can get to early on, all on starting road heading south-west. None are called Stormspire. There's a windhaven but fae storm mage who wipes me out every time is there. Is it a spell?

[Seswatha]

Originally posted by dmcf:

Originally posted by Seswatha:

I ended up running like a headless chicken between the flanks since I had all my army on the main wielder. Peradin (?) didn't have anything for most of the game. I've build barracks everywhere and had quite high command, the army was like 3-4 stacks of archers with upgraded capacity, 1-2 stacks swordsmen, and some bards in 2 slots for songs and mana, though it changed over time as I lost troops.

Merkoth (the first undead) was very easy, killed him without really losing anything I think by just shooting everything up with archers. The Fae chief was also easy and died in a similar fashion although he caught me off guard and managed to convert my large settlement which was a shame.

Fae caster was where the things got messy as she can chain lightning your archers killing like 15 per stack per cast, I've spread out and tried to kill off her mana generators (small fae stacks) asap, while blocking her melee with mine but I still lost a lot and I actually had to load an auto save to replay the battle. If you have a chance to get magic resist on level up, take it, that's my advice for both campaigns.

I managed to rebuild a decent army when the Baron showed up, he did not take any settlements and beelined to the north where I've met him. He was actually easier than the Fae caster, essence shield did mess up my archers but I had more swordsmen stacks now since I lost too many archers in the previous fight, so I just used them to provoke counter attacks from enemy melee to remove essence shield and then focused with archers.

From the timing perspective, I actually took the Loth town relatively late, and was sitting on 2 small towns with barrack + 2 farms build for a while clearing the western part of the map, so I'm not sure if taking it triggers the invasions earlier and makes things harder.

My build was:
Command 7
Guard 3
Archery 3
Prepared something
Order something (definitely not 3 but maybe 2, I got it offered quite late)
Power: Farsight

If you manage to get Creation and/or Magic resistance on levelups it makes things infinitely easier.

P.S. Mission 4 you get Stormspire with a decent build so you have a proper wielder even if your initial one still sucks.

Can't get West because the road is blocked it says "now is not the time" when you try to go there, then blocks it.

Where is Stormspire? Can only find 3 settlements I can get to early on, all on starting road heading south-west. None are called Stormspire. There's a windhaven but fae storm mage who wipes me out every time is there. Is it a spell?

Sorry, east, the fey forest region. Mixed it up.

Stormspire is a hero you get in mission 4, forget about it if you're still on mission 3.

Fey mage is the toughest out of 4 imo, you need to have a good army and kill her fast or she blasts you with spells.

[Dunadd]

@Seswatha yeah it's the fae mage i can't beat. Thought I was beating her once when defending a town with archers and casting initiative bonuses on them, then she wiped out most of my army with one chain lightning spell.

I tried touring the map getting all the permanent stat increase stuff and temporary 1 battle buffs and the locations that get you +! to each school of magic, and trying using different equipment like the fey bow, but she just wipes out most of my rangers with one spell sooner or later and then i'm beat.

[steelwork]

like someone else said, do not rush all the cities. take your time with the one you have and clear everything around it. then when you are ready you can go down and take everything.
the armies attacking you triggers when you go out to take over the other cities.
do'nt hesitate to skip mutliple turns if you lack money to build up some more troops.

don't try to defend your cities, let them fall and retake them with your main wielder.
you ll have to do several back and forth like this until you killed them all. then the north path will unlock and you ll be able to take over thenorthen city. at this point you should have a powerfull enough army to face anything else that may come to you.

[Seswatha]

Originally posted by dmcf:

@Seswatha yeah it's the fae mage i can't beat. Thought I was beating her once when defending a town with archers and casting initiative bonuses on them, then she wiped out most of my army with one chain lightning spell

Might be tough depending on how you've built your main so far tbh, unlike HOMM you can build characters in a way that's hard to make progress with. I've posted my above. Mine had enough command to field a big enough army with enough bodies + initiative and archery boosts to go earlier and do more damage with my range units. I still took a lot of casualties. Archers have very low hp per stack, so going knights might be better, especially if you have the +1 or the +2 movement on first turn powers. Magic resist would be ideal in hindsight but you're far from guaranteed to roll it.

[madracc00n]

Go to youtube and watch someone beat it.It is easy even mission 4 is kinda easy if u know what u do.Or just wait for Easy difficulty lvl option.

[Dunadd]

Finally beat her by abandoning original settlement when she took it, marching all round map for stat increase locations, coming out at Windhaven, taking Windhaven, and recruiting fae nobles and horned ones and replacing half my army with them. With fae troops in my army I beat her easily. Bit annoying I couldn't do it with humans, but at least I beat her.

Unfortunately I seem to have a bug that whenever I complete a mission it sends me to the start of the second mission instead of the next mission. Maybe because I loaded saved games that were saved before the recent updates?

[Rithrin]

Fae towns are Human towns. The Arleon faction uses both, you just unlock the Fae buildings in this mission.

[Qiox]

Originally posted by nanda.ag:

3rd Mission is quite easy don't take the 2nd town until your first town is build up and you amass a sizable army I think the enemy heroes appear when you take towns

That seems right. I actually went around the entire map taking all resources and buffs and never saw a single enemy wielder. Then I took the towns and they showed up one after another 1 or 2 turns apart. But they were total wimps compared to me and I killed them easily.

[J-Russ]

Originally posted by nanda.ag:

3rd Mission is quite easy don't take the 2nd town until your first town is build up and you amass a sizable army I think the enemy heroes appear when you take towns

Everytime I try to build up the first town I get curb stomped by Mel what's his name. Tried running around the map to build my forces up but he always chases me down.