Barya last mission difficulty...

[Rolan McDolan]

So I'm playing on "Fair" mostly because I don't want to savescum and min-max, I just want to complete it in one go without having to experience frustration inducing moments.
Like all campaign 4th missions, it's a timed mission where you must capture the beacons before the AI does (not a fan of these).

My problem with this mission is:
- Like most of the time, you start with no town, and have to find one. The first one you find is a small settlement, and the next one is a large settlement, not a city. The only large settlement there is in miles.
Haven't finish the mission, but i'm guessing the AI starts with a city...
- Once you start to get going, you get attacked by a constant flux of wielders of loth (can't do anything about it either). They always come with a medium-large size army about every turn or every few turns, stopping the progress of your main army.
You can use a secondary army to deal with it, but they are going to take huge casualties because your main army is better equipped and better leveled.
- On top of that, once the Ranas gets to 6 Beacons, the forest opens up just to give you the finger. Defeating the large Rana army rewards you only with a small settlement...

Basically, my complaint is that I'm playing on what should be easy, I'm not playing like an idiot either so I should be steamrolling, but instead i'm finding myself constantly loading and savescumming to counter the stupid events that the game throws at you.
Since this is a timed mission, I'm not left with a whole lot of choices, which is exactly what I didn't want when i selected "fair" difficulty.
My plea to the devs is: Fix your difficulty! I don't care if you end up making Overwhelming difficulty literally impossible and take pride in it because it has been mathematically proven that you can't complete it, but easy difficulty should be easy!
Hard difficulty should be a big challenge for everyone (including masochists), normal should keep a decent amount of challenge while giving time to breathe, easy should let the player win without prior knowledge of the events to come.
"Fair" difficulty isn't fair at all, fix it!

P.S.: Only 0.7% of your player base finished the campaign, and granted it hasn't been out for a long time, but it should give you a hint that something isn't right if you get less than 1% to finish it.

[Gin Kenshin98]

The mission isn’t timed, it’s a capture beacons mission just like Loth 4.

I played it on worthy and it actually became the easiest 4th mission surprisingly enough. Here’s how I did it if that helps.

For nimander, I think getting the last bandit reinforcement is a trigger for the bottom right rana general. My nimander was kinda weak and army wasn’t great even with the bandits, so what I did was lure the fans as far away from the city as possible, fight and lose but I took out 90% of the enemy strength, then respawn nimander asap and recruit any troops to finish the job. This did take some safe scum but it was enjoyable since I managed to beat impossible odds with some strategy.

Also nimander isn’t useless after beating and finishing the bottom part of the map. I won’t spoil it, but I’ll just say that the game frequently brings up how Everthink is the best tinkerer and can fix anything. Wink wink.

For the Loth barrage, the first that attack you don’t actually respawn and are quite weak. The undead generals that respawn from the bot left can be difficult. They say it’s endless but their raids actually end, I think after each of them attack 4-5 times. The final wave is obviously the hardest. Coral likes spells and armour dude is more brute force. You can do 2 things to combat it:

Use bihgli and completely let exploring up north take a back seat. The tabs don’t actually attack from what I played, they’ll stay in that part of the map. Build a rally point in the town north of where the Loth ppl spawn and keep resupplying bihgli after every fight. There’s about 3-ish turns between each raid, and they both need 1 turn to reach the town so you should have plenty of time to resupply. Having a nicely built skill set is kinda needed, I basically made him the ultimate caster with multiple essence generation and some spell res.

The other way is doing the same, but using Everthink instead. His innate skill is like 40% spell dmg or resistance, can’t recall exactly, but it’s excellent to combat the Loth people. The only problem is that he starts underleveled.

I also did everything in mission 3, so my bihgli was pretty beefy from the perma stat buff locations. Mission 3 also has 3 item markets, so you can deck out your bihgli and nimander. I gave both of them resource generation items so throughout the whole early game of 4, I was making bank which made resupplying easier. And I also sold the items I bought and acquired for a big gold boost.

There’s also a couple of 1 battle long buff locations around where Loth ppl spawn, those can help you defend as well.

[Rolan McDolan]

If Rana gets to 8 Beacons, it's basically game over, and since Rana's Beacons are in between your starting point and all the way to where they are, this makes it a timed mission, which objective is to prevent Rana from getting to the 8th Beacon.
Anyway, my point still stands, you shouldn't have to plan ahead while playing on easy.

Also, no way this is the easiest of the 4th missions, on the 4th mission of Rana you literally start with a city (completed it on worthy it without too much trouble). The 4th mission of Loth (you also have a city not too far away) is the same as this one, but easier: Take out Barya and you can focus mainly on stopping Rana.

[Gin Kenshin98]

The AI will never reach this beacon threshold from my experience on both worthy and fair for both loth and barya mission 4. In the barya specifically, I think the AI is just confused because their area has to be navigated thru the beacons, that's why I didn't even get attacked until I took the town way up north. Even then they took a lot of turns to actually take it.

I mentioned the preparation to mean that even on worthy and with doing these minor things, it is doable.

You don't have to restart the whole campaign, just try doing the strategies I mentioned and hold out against the loth raids. On worthy they were manageable, it should be a lot easier on fair.

I recommend using harima troops in your armies too, since the assassins are great Judgement bait and the AI likes to use that spell, bagpipers are the best essence generators and give you great buffs. I always have at least 2 of them with me for that reason. And the big harima dudettes are great frontline inf. Hell you can make it easy by just building the cannons.

You can use your other wielders to constantly visit locations that give you resources like farms and the like, to keep your economy up. Since you only need 1 wielder to deal with the loth raids.

[Rolan McDolan]

That is actually not true, from first hand experience I lost my 4th Loth mission while playing on worthy. A message popped up saying something along the lines of "Hey man, the enemy has captured the beacons it needed to win the game, you have till X turns to steal one of their beacons or it's GG". I had just beaten Barya at this point, and there was no way I could capture some of Rana's beacons, which were on the other side of the map, before the time runs up. I then simply switched to Fair difficulty to avoid having to do a mission over again.

[FreezeZ]

Easiest way of doing that mission is go8ng for piper+artificier build. This will give you a lot of essence generation and high dmg from units.

To get all beacons Rana need to capture beacon north of settlement with everthink. Plus they tend to stay in their area until you take one of their settlements. So you don't need to rush for them. Army from the south was easiy to deal with on worthy. If you prepared in settlement you most likely will have enough to win but its also easy to get army strong enough so they don't even attack.

After you deal with them you can move Nimander to meet Bhigli. I user Bhigli to fight Loth and Nimander to expolore north and attack Rana.

[joker1000]

What is the point to bring Merkoth stronger and stronger back? He is already Level 30 and has an infinity army to beat.

[DonPete]

Originally posted by joker1000:

What is the point to bring Merkoth stronger and stronger back? He is already Level 30 and has an infinity army to beat.

He does have a stopping point. The last loth attack is Merkoth with a an army that only has legions in it (assuming they've been beaten merkoth, coral, merkoth...).

[Knight of Slaanesh]

Originally posted by Rolan McDolan:

So I'm playing on "Fair" mostly because I don't want to savescum and min-max, I just want to complete it in one go without having to experience frustration inducing moments.
Like all campaign 4th missions, it's a timed mission where you must capture the beacons before the AI does (not a fan of these).

My problem with this mission is:
- Like most of the time, you start with no town, and have to find one. The first one you find is a small settlement, and the next one is a large settlement, not a city. The only large settlement there is in miles.
Haven't finish the mission, but i'm guessing the AI starts with a city...
- Once you start to get going, you get attacked by a constant flux of wielders of loth (can't do anything about it either). They always come with a medium-large size army about every turn or every few turns, stopping the progress of your main army.
You can use a secondary army to deal with it, but they are going to take huge casualties because your main army is better equipped and better leveled.
- On top of that, once the Ranas gets to 6 Beacons, the forest opens up just to give you the finger. Defeating the large Rana army rewards you only with a small settlement...

Basically, my complaint is that I'm playing on what should be easy, I'm not playing like an idiot either so I should be steamrolling, but instead i'm finding myself constantly loading and savescumming to counter the stupid events that the game throws at you.
Since this is a timed mission, I'm not left with a whole lot of choices, which is exactly what I didn't want when i selected "fair" difficulty.
My plea to the devs is: Fix your difficulty! I don't care if you end up making Overwhelming difficulty literally impossible and take pride in it because it has been mathematically proven that you can't complete it, but easy difficulty should be easy!
Hard difficulty should be a big challenge for everyone (including masochists), normal should keep a decent amount of challenge while giving time to breathe, easy should let the player win without prior knowledge of the events to come.
"Fair" difficulty isn't fair at all, fix it!

P.S.: Only 0.7% of your player base finished the campaign, and granted it hasn't been out for a long time, but it should give you a hint that something isn't right if you get less than 1% to finish it.

The strategy for Barya that has always worked for me...ignore any mechanics on the faction and just go for T2, get as many Brutes as you can. No other unit, just Brutes.
If your economy starts to look good, you can also get Assassins (same T2 building)

[Anomander]

You can use your main wielder for defending - the Beacon is just outside of the city. So you can always teleport back. Build Rally Point in this town and you won't need to move to any other town.

[Lavapotion]

Beacon Teleports is the key to make this easier, but first time I played it I completely forgot about the mechanic (which might mean that we need to put more focus into making it visible).

I stayed behind with Bihgli and fought the hordes of Loth and then expanded with Evertink.

We are introducing a simple setting for campaigns (as well as keeping fair) for those that want a more casual approach to the game.

And people? Awesome advise there!

[n8c]

Annoyed af by this mission as well.
Only got it first try by ASSUMING I'd reach a city at the end of the path (which there was, luckily), otherwise I would have been ♥♥♥♥♥♥ because the 5th spawn in a row of these op mf from bottom left is just TOO MUCH ffs.... and I had to RUN and pray I have enough army to capture the city. Which BARELY worked.

The fix is simple: Give a proper city and/or reduce the respawn from 3? rounds by +1 or +2.
Then still: I HATTTEEEEE not being able to progress because I permanently have to walk back to some stupid npc attacking me. The forest fire break was predictable (well you did it to yourself, no? ).

PS: Yes knowing the setup I would have played vastly differently.
Yet as a HoMM3 veteran, I ezed through any of the other maps without ever reloading (ok, I may have rarely gotten SUPER greedy and paid the price ^^) and then this one clearly was out of the regular.

Very cool missions though, which I don't want this to take anything away from.
Looking forward to playing some free games now

[Imry von Larisch]

Alright Bois, I know you didn't ask, but my guide how I beat mission 4 on overwhelming:

I also dreaded this mission and was annoyed by it by first time on fair but second time I made preparation for overwhelming run and it was much more fun then Loth 4 I played beforehand, that one was quite frustrating. Both missions are race for beacons. Loth gives you freedom to take it however you want but in the end I finished by simply taking beacons before Rana hordes overwhelmed me.

Barya 4 on other hand is much more linear experience and interesting challenge by having only one big building to choose your strategy on.

1st, Replay mission 3. You want bhigli and nimander on max level and with max available movement. Having bhigli with 24 or how many steps is simply game changer and gives you much more leavey on your turns.
Optional hack. Buy off literally every available artefact from every raider market on the third map. Trust me. Having 30-40k + gold is great boost for your economy.

You have basically one big choice on this map. Canons, academy upgrades or armory upgrades. Many people use canons, I was thinking trying max buffed brutes, but after some consideration I chose academy. You can buff your economy early by stuff you need, keep more troops on bhigli and buff your essence gain, that one is important.

Idk what is trigger for flank Rana forces but after I claimed bandit and mines with nimander I still had plenty of turns, he sat idle in main settlement for like 5-10 turns.

When you meet ever think, I had one big adventage. I had Tutor on bhigli. There was certainly moments I was mad I wasted 2-3 skill points I could use on something better, but buffing nimander and mainly everthink on level 18 by simply meeting him was very big help in the end. Might have been crucial to be honest.

I send everthink back with max buffed magic and split stack full of pipers. No need to waste many of them, just max command and magic. Pipers generate order and destruction. Everthink gets order and destruction level 3. Rana flank forces comes with plenty of dragons. You see where this is going.

Btw you have two choices. Everthink can fix portal bhigli used or one of wielders can clean the barricade that prevent you going north at the starting location. You probably don't wanna do that, could possibly make Loth go for your backline and destroy your economy and take your only tier 3 building. But if you just wanna race for beacons and not fight them, maybe you can try that. Back to everthink and flanking Rana forces.

If everthink can clean 2-3 stacks of dragons from flanking rana forces by justice spam, Nimander shouldn't have problem with bandits and one stack of 50/51 death dreads to clean flanking rana and claim their economy for you.

After that it simple juggling. Bhigli with max movement doesn't have much difficulties to claim a beacon, teleport back, defeat Loth, replenish forces through rally point and teleport back to Rana front to push for another beacon.

In the end, you aren't supposed (but it can be done) defeat Loth waves, just hold them on the rally point. Story is Bhigli uses power of beacons to defeat endless attacking hordes.

After one fight with Rana on the beacon front, their second wielder run to hide in the settlement, because Bhigli was that strong. I simply moved around, claimed beacon behind their front, teleported Nimander and Everthink who were ready to their backline and claimed beacons to win, at which point there was multiple Loth wielders rallying at everthink settlement and Rana tried to push back by claiming my beacons, but neither of them had enough movement to overrace me. It was thrilling and pretty within campaign lore.

You of course shouldn't have big problem to destroy Rana and claimed their city to fight Loth back yourself if you wish.

[n8c]

Originally posted by Ser Imry Florent:

....one of wielders can clean the barricade that prevent you going north at the starting location. You probably don't wanna do that, could possibly make Loth go for your backline and destroy your economy and take your only tier 3 building.

Na the AI doesn't care.
I saved before doing that because you never know 1) if this is implemented/autoregulated by AI 2) if AI can simply open the path by itself.
Either way, since I opened it myself... 7? spawns of both heroes NEVER went there.

They seem to be aimed at the main hero, prioritizing local buildings of course, but e.g. ignoring the middle town in the hills (on their 2nd+ spawns, since the first one spawns one in the middle - where he will prioritize it because the range isn't that big.

Originally posted by Ser Imry Florent:

In the end, you aren't supposed (but it can be done) defeat Loth waves, just hold them on the rally point. Story is Bhigli uses power of beacons to defeat endless attacking horses.

Which I expect on difficulties above "Fair" ;)

[Imry von Larisch]

It is possibility I had to take account for, but never had to worry about as I didn't open the path and Loth wielders seems to be going for rally point settlement first, after which I never let survive attacking it or converting it in case Bhigli wasn't there on time with enough forces, but good to know. Either way, I think repairing the portal is much more movement efficient so there isn't really a reason to remove the roadblock but it's neat that option is there.

Also story was made in mindest with fair difficulty, now we have "simple" difficulty as well.

[Bumc]

I kinda just rolled everything over with shadows/brutes + magic and never bothered with cannons. Beacon teleports let you swat Loth with the main army before they take a city while Nirmander chills with his bandits in the back.