Tribes of the East - A Murder of Crows

Welcome to the second expansion of Heroes of Might and Magic V - Tribes of the East. The new expansion
pack introduces another new faction - the Stronghold (Orcs). There will be again a total of 3 new campaigns,
plus a little bonus -- a prologue mission where Nival lets you test drive the Orcs.

The intro cutscene made me think we are going to play Kujin the Shaman (WOW, they got a ESRB Teen rating
for this?), but you actually control Quroq, the clan general(?) who has decided to rebel against slavery.
Apparantly, the Orc's fate hasn't been too bright up to this point.

Too bad it isn't windy.

So what do we know about the Orcs? Like previous Strongholds, this is a prototype Might race. In fact, Orc
heroes can't cast any magic at all. No more Resurrection, Mass Slow or Fireball. Instead, the Orcs consume
mana to perform War Cries to boost and to damage. In this mission, Quroq won't be able to learn any more war
cries (He knows two from the start. None of them very helpful.), so the focus is primarily on unit tactics. You
will be able to see 5 out of 7 Stronghold creatures here.

The stats distribution for Orcs is quite biased towards Attack. This is very nice for an army that consists of
predominately melee units. The creatures' iniative is actually average, but their speed (moving range) is quite
miserable. In order to reach the enemy before getting shot to beehives, you need some feats and artifacts to
increase your speed. Another way to do it is through the high morale effect (the Eagle, ATB reset to 50%
instead of 0%) to keep your units moving. High morale also has the benefit of increasing your Rage Points
(through a feat, and simply more action).
The new Blood Rage system is unique to the Orcs. Rage Points are like experience points for each individual
stack during the battle. When a stack reaches a certain amount of rage points, its Rage Level goes up - and the
units' ability also elevates. Different creatures gain different bonus. For more details please see this excellent
website hosted on Age of Heroes:

There are many ways to increase your Rage Points, such as melee attacking, defeating a stack, losing a friendly
stack. (Losing 1-unit stacks also helps.) On the contrary, you can lose rage points by being damaged (but your
damage is reduced) or simply waiting. Waiting is really bad for the Orcs. Your hero waits without penalty,
though.

In a short, neutral stack battle, it is sometimes OK to wait since

you can still kill the stack in the next blow before getting
retaliated. Rage levels make a good difference in a long,
difficult battle, where you probably never wait anyways.

So which skills are good for Quroq? This is a one-mission

campaign, and it is fairly easy. If you'd still like to optimize him
a little, I would highly recommend Expert Leadership and
Luck. For a might hero you can never go wrong with eagle and
rainbow. Each skill point gives you roughly 10% more damage.
And did I tell you that you can now reach more than +5 of
morale and luck? Quroq already starts with Attack, Logistic and Leadership. So you can just wait for Luck.

Another thought is War Machines. You have very weak ranged

power, no magic and no flier in this mission. However, the last
battle (a siege) is quite easy so you can probably still do well
without it.

For feats, under Leadership pick Recruitment to fulfill the

requiremtn of Aura of Swiftness (all units speed + 1. This is
THE FEAT!). Also pick Battle Elation for faster rage point
charging. This feat then leads to Retribution under Attack (5%
damage bonus for each point of morale.) For more details of the
skill paths you can refer to the brilliant skill wheel hosted on
this site:
Prologue
A Murder of Crows

Map Size: Normal

Level Cap: None
Difficulty Index: 2/5
Last Updated: October 18, 2007, Patch v3.0

You start at the bottom right corner (1) of the map. You have two main objectives (no sidequest). First, take
Town A. Second, rescue 4 groups of Orcs. By visiting various Hut of Magi on the map their locations will be
revealed. The Red AI (Renegade Haven) is not aggressive. Your strength mainly comes from the 4 groups of
Orcs that you will rescue along the way.

Resources (wood, ore, etc.) are totally useless in this mission, so don't bother picking them up. You will need
some cash to recruit troops but there will be a gold mine to flag, and a gold bag artifact to pick up. That's more
than enough income. Therefore, all the treasure chests can be converted to EXP points. There is no level cap on
this mission. In my run, I leveled Quroq all the way to Lv24.

Quroq starts with a fair number of Warriors (tier 3), which is a slow melee unit. First, go back a little to recruit
some more. Head north to (O1) and you will be able to rescue a large group Centaurs (tier 2) - after dispatching
a swarm of peasants. Like always, split out 1-unit stacks to block the enemy / absorb the retaliation, and you
should win the fight with a minimal loss.

Even better, a Centaur creature building is now added to your starting area (1). Don't hurry to go back yet as the
weekly growth is rather insignificant compared to your current stack size. You will have more creature
buildings here as you rescue more creatures down the way.

The Centaurs are your only shooters. They are big (2x2) and
quite vulnerable, so you have to protect them with some 1-unit
stacks. Most of the neutral stacks in this mission can be
effectively thinned down by the Centaurs before your melee
units swarm up for the kill.

Keep heading north. Instead of travelling on the paved road

(tougher enemies), take the grassland route (3). Pay some
special attention to the Renegade Battle Griffins. They can
now battle dive as well. The Imperial Griffins dive to a specific spot like a vertical punch from above, while the
Battle Griffins dive as a horizontal lawn mower. Everything in the 2-tile line gets damaged a little. It is still very
easy to dodge their dives, though. AIs always pick your largest stacks (preferably shooters) to dive, so just move
everything away from the two tiles of your likely targets (see the picture on the right for details).

On your east lies a two-way portal (II) guarded by some

Zealots (shooters). This portal leads to a top-notch artifact, on a
little island in the middle of a lake. Your army is not powerful
enough yet, so leave it for now and keep heading north. You
will see a Peasant's Hut (P). Approach it to blow it up
(seriously you can hear the explosion) for great cash and EXP
rewards! There are a total of 3 peasant's Huts on the map.

From the hut, go west and return to the paved road, and keep
heading north. At the end of the road (O2) you will be able to
rescue the second (and very large) group of Stronghold units -
Goblins (tier 1).
The swarm of goblins will become your primary damage dealer for quite a while. They are fairly fast and
powerful, but they never retaliate (because they run away when getting hit). Don't forget to flag the gold mine
here and stay worry free for the rest of the mission.

There are quite a few stat boosters and artifacts in the area SW to (4). The guarding Champions are quite
powerful, but with good 1-stack Goblin tactics you shouldn't take a serious blow. Note that champions' charge
can penetrate one unit, so don't place any suicidal Goblin directly infront of your main stack. Once the
Champions get close, your main Goblin stack + Centaurs should be able to take care of them. Sweep this area
clean for a lot of goodies (a great artifact, too). You probably want to avoid a shooter stack around (5) to
maintain your Centaur numbers. You can access the other half from the other side.

Once in a while, you can also return to your home base (1) to recruit more units. There is a short cut, an one-
way portal at (I), marked in orange. The portal brings you directly back to your base (I'). Too bad there is no
quick way back.

Wait -- Now you took the workers away, so who is going to mine your gold?

On your way to the one-way portal you can see a new type of building at (6). This is a sacrifice altar where you
can trade unwanted units for EXP points. The large peasant stack in front of it will offer to join. Forget about
their tax value (you did flag the gold mine, right?) and sacrifice them all for a nice EXP boost. Bye fatty!

There is another large stack of skeletons that offers to join just SE from here (7). It is tempting to keep them
because their numbers are so great, but Stronghold units live on their morales. Bye skelly!

There is an isolated area SW of where you rescue the Centaurs. There is a Peasant's hut to be blown up, a
Sylanna Acient (level up tree, (S)), and some good artifacts.

When you are ready, go back to your base to recruit whatever you can find, and follow the paved road west.
There is a Witch Hut (W) on the south, which might teach you something. Crush the resistance along the way,
and go south at the T junction. At the end of the road you can break the prison (O3) holding your third
Stronghold units - Slayers (tier 5). These guys are very powerful and fast. From now on you no longer have to
rely on Goblins.

The last group of Stronghold units, Cyclops (tier 7), is contained north from here, at (O4). You have to battle
some high-tier Haven units, but your Slayers should take them out easily. Too bad you don't get the Cyclop
building in your base.

By now you should have seen Red heroes roaming around,

picking up resources. They are not really a threat to you. The
weaker ones will actually flee.

There is another two-way portal (III) that brings you to a small

isolated area with some reasonable rewards. It is now the time
to pick up the good artifact on the little island (II) as well.

When everything is done, recruit your last batch of units from

home base and
go straight for
Town A. The
AI usually
splits up its
army to two
heroes. Half of
them wait
outside to be slaughtered on the grass. The other half hides
behind the wall, which gives you headaches because your army
does not have good ranged power. In my game, the enemy hero
casted Divine Vengeance on my Centaurs right after they devastated the defending Crossbowmen. I
immediately lost half of my 200+ Centaurs!

If you picked the War Machine skill and go for the Catapault feat things should be easier. In my game the AI
was still foolish enough to open its own gate by placing a blocking stack at the center. When the blocking stack
got killed the gate remained open. My cyclops rushed in and wiped everything out.

Congratulations for winning the Prologue! By the way, there seems to be a bug that you have to reach the
Cyclops (O4) before Month 2 Week 4 Day 1, or the game will freeze. There is no solution when it happens - so
better get there fast!

To Honor Our Fathers

M3: Father Sky's Fury

 Map Size: Large

 Level Cap: 22
 Difficulty Index: 2/5
 Last Updated: November 9, 2007, Patch v3.0

After Kujin's hard-fought success, our focus is shifted back to Gotai in

this straight-forward mission -- Destory All Humans!

There are six Haven towns to be demolished, three Blue and three Red.
The Haven AIs are not allies; apparantly they are at war and their
attention is not on you. This is reflected in the total lack of huge scripted
armies coming to run you over - a sharp contrast to the last mission. In
fact, during most of the mission you will be bugged by little AI heroes
carrying a small army (one-two weeks of creature growth). They love to
flee - totally wasting their creature production advantage. The neutral
stacks guarding goodies, on the other hand, are quite powerful. There are many good things to pick up on this
map, so I suggest taking care of the AIs first, and just before you deliver the finishing blow, pause and spend
two months collecting all the artifacts and stats (marked with blue *s).

Pick the 6000G bonus. There are lots of cash spending oppurtunity during the first week, and you can use the
last penny of it to give you a good boost. There are better Weapon artifacts on the map, so don't choose the
hammer. The one Cyclop bonus is a trap -- each Cyclop only costs 2900G, and they are available for hire on
Day 1!

You are given a pretty nice Stronghold town (A) to start, plus a handful of Stronghold creature buildings
including a high-level one - all flagged for you already. The nearby Sawmill and Ore pit are unguarded. A large
stack of Goblin just SE of the town nearby joins you for free. You have a large Warrior stack carried over from
mission one. You can't ask for better!

Your luck (in reality) might make this mission very easy. The first thing after the mission starts, check your
town tavern, and see if you can hire a hero with 3 stacks of ~10 Centaurs. Centaurs are very important as usual.
Another variable is what you get from the lv-2 War Cry guild. You want to learn Fear my Roar here, not the
other (you already have it). On high difficulty, it is a good idea to restart the mission if you don't get Fear my
Roar - it will make a difference early mission 5.

Immediately to the east of town (A) is a very nice area (1), consisting of a
Gem Mine, a Gold Mine, a Sulfur Pit, a random artifact and cash. On heroic
you have to beat a relatively-large neutral stack to gain access. Since you
have some free cash at start, just pour the coins into creatures and capture
this area ASAP. Hire this tavern hero for his Centaurs, and upgrade them
into Nomads. Hire more Centaurs from creature buildings. You can skip the
high-level creatures. Their number is too low to make a difference. Collect
the free Goblins SE to the town and upgrade them to Trappers as well. Use
your dominating Centaur stack to nail the Marksman, and your Trappers to
delay the advance of the large stack of Squires. Your Warriors hit hard, and
with enough Rage Points they are able to absorb the Squires' retaliation if
you run out of 1-stack Goblins. You should win this with just a little loss.

The Academy stack guarding the Gold Mine is also powerful. Since they are
large creatures, 1-stack goblins work great here. You will take losses but it
is very worthwhile - You get a Gold Mine! Get a Mercury + 1 going in the
town.

Now your income is healthy, but you are still lacking the red Crystals. There
is a crystal mine SW of the town. Along the way you have to fight a very
weak, but voiced Demon army (2). By visiting the Redwood Observatory
nearby you can see a catapult structure across the river. In about two weeks
it is going to fire at your high-level creature building and
damage it.

The fastest way to access the catapault is to build a ship from

the Shipyard guarded by some Phoenix. The Phoenix are still
too powerful for you at this stage, though. Let's take an
alternative route.

First, flag the Crystal Mine and the Mercury Lab along the
paved road, and burn the neutral cottages along the way. Each
cottage gives you some cash, and adds to your completion of an
optional quest. If you burn all cottages on the map, Gotai gets a
permenant Attack +2.

Come back to town (A) with Gotai to (hopefully) learn Fear my

Roar and gather more armies. Don't worry about the Talisman
as there are plenty of oppurtunities later. If you have sent a scout hero to gather resources out there, watch out
for the Blue heroes coming after. You can easily defeat these weak hereoes with Gotai. In fact, 70% of this
mission is about chasing down weak AI heroes, so you better not think it is tedious.

With the second week of creatures Gotai is powerful enough to take on the Blue towns. First, rush straight to
town (B) of the NW corner. It should be very lightly defended. After winning the siege the town is burned to
ground, and you receive various resources like hitting the jackpot on a slot machine! Get to the Slayer and
Cyclop building quickly.

Next, pass through the two-way portal (I) just beside the ruin of town (B) to emerge right beside town (C). Burn
it as well!

And look, just to the west of town (C) sits the Catapault that will damage your precious structure. Destroy!

Now Blue is reduced to just one town, and the Red heroes should not be a problem for about another week. In
my game, the guarding hero of Town (E) is quite high-leveled and her stats are pretty decent. Let's return Gotai
to the HQ to buy the level-3 Talisman (summon creatures) and pick up the third level War Cry. Either Battle
Cry or Anger of the Horde is good. In my game, I totally skipped the Wyverns until much later to save cash. I
also didn't hire any more tier 3 and 4 creatures.

There is an alternative route back home. Go straight south from the late town (B), burn more cottages and find
the two-way portal at (II). The exit of this portal (which is SW of your town) is blocked by quite a large group
of undead, so you probably need the third week of production shipped to you by a mule hero.
 Don't ask an Orc to take care of your house when you are on vacation.

Around this time the Red heroes should have been pouring out to the town (C) area, and chase around your low-
level hero(es). Let's deal with them right after taking down Blue in town (E). Let me introduce you a really,
really powerful tactics if you haven't discovered it yourself:

Split your Chieftain stacks equally in two (or more if you have
the free slot). Now during a hard battle, use their special ability
"Order of the Chief" on your most powerful stack. In a castle
assault it is probably your Centaur swarm. Against a powerful
neutral army, it is probably the right time to whip your Cyclops
(Untamed better than Bloodyeyed) non-stop into melee. What
you get is a very powerful stack attacking for eternity!

p.s. Later on, when you have more Chieftain, put no more than
60 into each stack because the ATB counter push is limited at
60%. 50 is around the ideal size here as you can whip twice in a
row to reach 100%, or waste nothing even the high-morale
(ATB back to 50%) is triggered on the Cyclops.

You will lose some units by your own whips, but in a tough
battle you will lose a lot more army if you don't kill their stacks
first. You want to take down the enemy before they inflict
heavy damage to you. The tradeoff is very worthwhile.

Let's start chasing the Red heroes. They might be coming after your town (A), so the portal (II) may be able to
save you. Fortunately, the AIs tend to flee back to town if they think you are stronger, so you really don't need
to chase them all over the world. Let's rush to take care of the Red, now!

There are two routes to take care of Red. You have probably noticed the first one right after taking town (D).
You were shown some battle between the Red and Blue on the bridge at (3). If you take this route, you need to
pass through a moderate garrison. The alternative way is to use the two-way portal (III), which the little Red
heroes probably have been heavily using to invade you. It doesn't matter which route you pick because you are
always going to end up with attack down (E) first. Another easy town!

After burning town (E) you can either go after town (F) or (G)
next. Town (F) has lots of resources nearby, so I think it is a
better choice (and leave the AI with the very basic town (G) for
two months). There is a mana well at (4) that you can use to
summon troops - shooters are what you are looking for in a
siege.

p.s. You can finish the mission right here by taking town (G).

I'll list all the attractions below in case you decide to explore:

The stairways (IV) SW of town (G) leads you to the final set of
two-way portal (V) underground, which takes you to a Dwarf
treasure hall. In there you can find two stat boosts, two
awesome Dwarven King artifacts (40% magic proof! wow),
various resources and an interesting shipyard. The Whirlpool in the underground lake magically takes you to the
river on the surface level (and you will lose units).

p.s. If the river is what you are after, it is better to use the one-way portal at (VI), though, as it brings you right
back to Town (A) to purchase the best Talisman, and close to the Shipyard (south of (2)) guarded by Phoenix.
By now you should have no difficulty beating it. Interestingly, Quick Combat always gives me better resut
against the Phoenix.
There is an Ogre artifact, (O1) just SE of town (A). The other Ogre articact (O2) is in the middle of a small
island upstream, accessible by boat.

The Cape artifact of the Lion's Spirit set (L1) is also accessible by boat. You can actually find another Lion
Neklace (L2) in the Red territory (so much for the trouble in Mission 1!). The best out of the three, the Lion
Crown (L3), is hidden south of the late Blue Town (C).

Don't deploy the Centaurs or the entire stack will be gone!

While this mission is very easy, the guarding neutral stack of the Lion Crown is quite a sight - in my game I saw
a swarm of Titans, splitting into 4 stacks of 90+! But only in a true challenge our Might is properly shown. It is
hard to believe how much 40+ Bloodeyed Cyclop and 2 cheering Chieftain stacks can do!

p.s. If for some reason you cannot defeat the Titans, there is an
alternative way (thanks to Arveragus). When you sail down the
river that is south of the Lion's Crown area, you will encounter
a group of Fire Elementals fighting a group of Water
Elementals. You can help either stack to defeat the other one,
and the suviving stack will help you kill the Titans when you
come back to the giants!

There are two Dragon artifacts, one just beside the Lion's Cape
(L1) and the other at (D2).

I have marked all of the Cottages (peasants huts) with red (P)s.
In fact you can also use a secondary hero to burn them down.
As soon as you burn the last one all of your heroes, including
Gotai, receive Attack +2.

There are various Catapults on the map. By spending 15 Ores

you can fire a shot at various targets pre-determined by each particular Catapult's orientation. Some of the
Catapualts actually aim at a Haven town - three shots (45 Ores) is what you need to bring down a town without
a fight! You can get a lot more treasures by taking it down by an army, though. Too bad there is no Catapult
aiming at those 360 Titans!

The area at (5) contains a Memory Mentor to adjust Gotai's skills. Some people would suggest you to take
Shatter Dark for a future mission. I ended up doing it, but I think I should have gone with Logistics or kept
Shouting... I highly recommend Triple Ballista (War Machine) and Flaming Arrow (Attack) here, plus Aura
of Swiftness and Battle Elation under Leadership as well as Barbarian's Luck under Luck. There are two
Witch Huts (W) on the map. You can always leave one skill slot blank, pick up a garbage skill to trade for
something useful here.

While you are collecting artifacts and stat points all over the map, again the Red heroes will make a run at your
weaker heroes. To make things easier, you can fight them with a secondary hero carrying a large army of the
less-useful units, or fresh town productions to be eventually shipped to Gotai. The Red is really annoying, but
there is a good chance that the AI will stuck themselves with a caravan on the bridge! The AI is not allowed to
go down the stairs at (IV), therefore invading your HQ.

Finally, take down the last Red town and claim victory. Let's push the "that was easy" button!

To Honor Our Fathers

M4: Mother Earth's Wisdom

 Map Size: Normal

 Level Cap: 26
 Difficulty Index: 1/5
 Last Updated: November 9, 2007, Patch v3.0

Again we are back as Kujin, but this time her job is a lot
simpler. This is a typical solo scenario where your lone hero
eventually travels to every corner of the map through a
unrealistically winding pass that eventually utilize the entire
map, and witness every scripted event along the way. It seems
that a lot of Mission 4s are designed this way (Markal, Raelag,
Findan, Fredya, Wulfstan, and now Kujin), too!

Good news first - all Stronghold stacks will join you for free,
and they come in great numbers! There is no time pressure
except that neutral creatures grow every week - but so is your
Stronghold reinforcement. Even if you are terrible at troop
conservation, you will still have enough troops to beat a very easy mission boss.
Therefore, the bad news is this mission has no challenge at all.

Generally speaking, you want to fight as much enemies as possible to level up Kujin to the cap before the final
battle. In my game, I fought everything reasonable (skipped almost all of the shooters/casters), and was able to
cap Kujin just before the boss battle. The resources on the ground are not useful at all - there is no quest using
them. However, you do need some cash at the end to upgrade units and to buy artifacts, so pick up the gold bars
if it is not too much trouble. Cash out the smaller chests as well. In my game I actually picked up a lot of
resources, and I had a 30K leftover in the bank when the mission ends. So you can probably skip ~30K worth of
resources on the ground to speed things up.

The starting bonuses are about the same. I picked the 10

Centaur bonus to add to Kujin's little starting stack of 15.
Follow the obvious road south and pick the easier battles.
Defeat a tiny stack of Devils to enter the first quarter of the
map. You can see a broken bridge at (1), which would have led
you straight to the exit! Now you have to take the longer path.
This mission is divided into four quarters, and each one has its
own objective and sometimes an optional quest. When you
meet the main objective, find a Seer Hut to teleport Kujin to
the next quarter.

First Quarter (NE)

On higher difficulty it is likely that your starting army is too

weak do take on anything major. Do yourself a favor and go
straight to the Stronghold creatures (all reinforcement are
marked with lower-cased yellow letters): Earth Daughters (d)
and Warriors (w) just to the east. After picking them up you should be powerful enough to beat everything in
this quarter. But still, for troop conservation you don't want to fight the shooters and casters unless they guard
something you really want.

Make sure to visit the Red Keymaster tent (red K). Just south of the tent is a hidden path in the forest, leading
you to a Dragon artifact (helm) at (D1). When you are ready, go to the Seer Hut at (2) to jump to the next
quarter, at (2').

Second Quarter (SE)

Go straight north to pick up a large group of Centaurs (c). Note

that your reinforcement stacks also grow every week, so if you
arrive at a stack on Day 7 of a given week, end the turn and
pick them up on the next turn/week. I picked up 11 more
Centaurs here just by wasting a tiny fraction of Kujin's daily
movement. Keep going north and you will notice a Red Gate
(G) to the east. Unlock it and VOALA - the most powerful
might artifact on lower middle earth -- the Lion's Crown
(morale + 2, luck + 2)! BOOOO! This is too easy compared to
the 360+ Titans in the last mission.

To the north of the Lion's Crown await lots of Goblins (g) to

join you. Further north you will notice an Imp (yeah, 1 Imp)
guarding a Dragon artifact (D2). It can't be this easy, right?
Actually when you get close, your exit will be sealed by a stack Succubus, but you can still get the artifact! With
enough Rage Points, you won't lose a lot of Centaurs (probably single digit).

Let's sweep the lake in a counter-clockwise fashion. Go west and visit a mana x 2 spring at (3). Further west you
can see a Seer Hut at (4). This Seer tells you to kill at least one assassin in exchange of the Tarot card artifact,
which is mandatory to pass the second quarter. You have no other choice than accepting the quest and hunt
down the assassins - they are conveniently located just SE of the hut. Report back at the hut to receive the Tarot
Card. You can also recruit a tiny stack of Wyverns (y) at the center of the shallow lake.

Just south of the Seer Hut is a Blue Keymaster (blue K). Pay a visit and pick up some more Warriors (w) just
south of it. Next march east to grab the free Goblins (g). At (5) a cutscene plays and you discover that Kujin is
really not, again, Biara. :) Go to the Seer Hut at (6) to finish up this quarter.

Suddenly the Orcs and Humans have reached a truce - yeah? (See mission 5 for more.)

Third Quarter (SW)

You start at (6'). Immediate to your north is the long-awaited Siege Workshop if you have Triple Flaming
Ballista. If so your life has just become even easier! 0/5 on the scale!

Pick up the Centaurs (c) further north. The reinforcement just keeps coming even if you really don't need them,
eh? At the NE corner of this quarter you can visit the Yellow Keymaster Tent (yellow K), pick up a stack of
Earth Daughters (d) and unlock the Blue Gate (blue G). What you get is the ring artifact of the Urgash set
(enemy morale -2). Not bad at all! Now you are ready to report to the Seer at (8) to take on the last quarter.
 The green aura = Microsoft certified copy of the official Seer Tent!

Fourth Quarter (NW)

You start at (8'). According to the map file that I opened in the editor, there should be a small stack of Wyverns
just west from here, but in my game I didn't see anything. Follow the grass path SW to see the paved roadd. If
you are like me who actually picked up a ton of resources along the way as a potential quest requirement, go SE
from here to sell them all to a Trading Post (T). This is your only chance to cash out.

Follow the paved road NW you can see an Artifact Merchant at (9). I
was able to buy what Kujin missed back in mission 2 - the Dragon's Eye
Ring. (I was able to buy it again in the next mission, by the way.) Just
south of the merchant is yet another stack of Centaurs (c) joining you.

With so many shooters it is now a good time to tackle the optional quest -
to find a Sunken Temple which I have marked with a red X. The path
leading to the temple is just east of the Artifact Merchant. The Sunken
Temple is essentially a Dragon Utopia guarded by something equally
annoying. It is not difficult at all, and your loss will be reasonable for the
rewards. I got a 1000G/turn Gold Bag here among other useless artifacts,
but a lot of cash and EXP points.

Follow the paved road west, and you can see a Stable and yet another
Seer Hut (10). You can spend a little cash here to recruit 40 Chieftains.
That's right, the Chiefs are here! Now your Centaurs are firing till their
arms drop! By the way, there might be yet another group of Goblins to
pick up by the Staple according to the map file, but I don't remember
seeing them myself. Or maybe there are just too many free stacks
joining, so they fail to impress me anymore.
West of the hut you can find the Yellow Gate (yellow G) that hides the other Urgash artifact (helm). Follow the
path north and you will see a Memory Mentor (11). If you have missed the Mentor in mission 2, here is
another chance to straight Kujin up. East of the mentor you can pick up the last stack of reinforcement, Warriors
(w), and finally upgrade units in a Hill Fort (12). Now if you have any cash left - hold on to it. (see last
paragraph, about the last battle)

You are now ready for the boss fight. Just follow the path north, and climb up the hill to the west. Alastor will
encounter you with an Infern... inferior army. No kidding for a mission 4 boss! In my game the fight was over
right after Kujin casted her first war cry. What a joke!

I think he belongs to mission 2. No wait, he is too weak for that.

Preparing for Kujin's Final Battle

It is actually a good thing to have a lot of cash left over!

Believe it or not, it will be Kujin, not Gotai, that appears in the final mission (in the Academy Campaign) of
Tribes of the East. Currently, the game will give Kujin an army and directly march her towards the enemy. She
does not even have a chance to adjust artifacts equipped by default (and the game makes very bad choices!). We
will discuss more details in the C3M4 walkthrough section.

Therefore, this Memory Mentor in C2M4 is actually your last chance to tune Kujin for her last appearance. Let's
throw away any skill that is not helping and go for the useful ones. First, forget about the Ballista - you won't
even have one! Going for the ultimate is not a bad idea, although the armies are so big that your starting Rage
Points won't last very long. Shatter Dark won't disappoint you as Kujin's opponent will cast them non-stop!
Don't leave Kujin without Luck - Magic Resistance - you never know when you can dodge another annoying
Frenzy. Barbarian's Luck is not necessary, because your enemy does not cast any damaging spell. Other than
that it is standard Might Build. Here comes an example:
 Expert Blood Rage: get rid of Powerful Blow and keep the other two
 Expert Attack: Battle Frenzy, Retribution
 Expert Leadership: Recruitment, Aura of Swiftness, Battle Elation
 Expert Luck: Expert Luck: Magic Resistance
 Expert Shatter Dark: Detain Dark

You should still have about 4 skill points left. Either Expert Enlightenment or Expert Defense will do well.
Have fun!

To Honor Our Fathers

M5: Hunting the Hunter
 Map Size: Large
 Level Cap: none
 Difficulty Index: 4/5
 Last Updated: November 9, 2007, Patch v3.0
The mighty Stronghold campaign reaches its climax in a one-against-all fashion. Your opponents are three allied
AI players with a total of 6 towns! Can you survive?

Your starting town (A) is in a relatively safe corner. To your west is a neutral Stronghold town (B) that you have
to develop sooner or later to shift the balance of power. There is also a Tear of Asha to be dug up to beef up
your creature growth and bank account.

To your south is a Teal, Necro AI player based in town (C). You might recall that Kujin has cleared doubts with
Arantir, so the Necromancers should be your trusted new friend. Nah. They are here just to make your life
miserable, and you can expect a Teal army backstabbing town (A) as soon as Gotai goes away. Although there
are some huge neutral blocking stacks separating you two, the AI heroes start with pretty high level and their
town builds fast. So they usually have no problem knocking on your door early on. By the way, all neutral
stacks are huge in this mission, which is quite exciting.
On the opposite end of the Teal Necro is the Red Haven based in town (E). If you think Kujin has also talked to
the Knights so they should be at peace, wrong again. The Red fraction has no territory to distract their attention
to, so they have to come after you!

Alaric's head is actually out of Gotai's strike zone. Better swing low!

In the dead center of the map is town (D), one of the four towns of the Orange Academy. Its strategic location
allows the owner of this town to threaten all others - or to be threatened. There are three Orange garrisons
surrounding town (D) that the Teal and Red players have full access through - not you, of course. The Orange
has three other towns (F), (G), and (H) south from here along the paved road. Your eventual goal is to take town
(H).

It doesn't look too bad, you might think. You've got Gotai and Kujin, right? You built a versatile Kujin during
mission 2 and 4, and picked up nice artifacts such as the Lion's set, the Runic set, the Enlightenment set and
various pieces of the Dragon set. Kujin also has Triple Flaming Ballista so she does not need a large army to
thrive. You can make her a reliable home protector. You can pass on the war cries that Gotai missed...

Actually, mission 4 was the last time that you ever see Kujin in the Orc
campaign! To think back, Gotai was all alone in the campaign since
mission 1. I hope you did spend some time with Gotai to pick up the
good artifacts (especially the Lion's set and the two Drwaven King
pieces), and gave him Triple Flaming Ballista. Plus you did win a coin
flip to receive Fear My Roar back in your only town in two previous
missions. They are all very useful in this mission, especially early on.

Here is my Gotai's skill setup later in the mission. Pretty standard Might
build and I gave up the ultimate in exchange of theTriple Flaming
Ballista and Aura of Swiftness. Shatter Dark, which is recommended by
many forum users, was completely wasted with my strategy of the last
battles, so I could have kept Shouting, or gone with something more
useful, probably Logistics + Path Finding to speed things up a little bit.

This mission is quite difficult to boot. At first, I followed the

conventional approach to flag nearby mines and gather scattering
treasures. However, since each AI is given a decent hero on Day 1, all of them (as well as any other new recruits
carrying fresh troops) immediately rushed me in a constant stream from two directions. The main Teal, Red and
Orange hero all approached my town during week 1. (This is quite similar to Raelag's "The Conquest".) I was
destined to defend the town forever 1 against 6. So I restarted the mission and took an ultra-aggressive approach
that the walkthrough is based on.

To follow this walkthrough your Gotai must have Triple Flaming Ballista (very useful early on) and preferably
Fear my Roar. There should be other ways to win this mission, so have fun discovering them yourself!

By the way, it is normal that the Orange AI takes very, very long turns. Even on a fast PC it might take half a
minute.

Nival tricked us! We want Kujin!

First off, pick the 2 Cyclop bonus. Go to your tavern and hopefully you can hire the guy with ~ 30 Centaurs for
2500G. Give everything you have to Gotai and attack the neutral stack blocking between the Teal and you at
(1). Your Ballista is doing all the work here, and in my game I actually deployed 6 x 1 Goblins to win this one.
We are aiming at Teal's town (C), so rush straight to the castle. The Teal hero might come directly to you
thinking you are weak, but he forgot that you have The Ballista. You should be able to take town (C) around
Day 5 even without Logistics. One down, five more to go!

Around this time the Orange and Red should be coming your way. In my game I did not give any Centaur to
Gotai to fit for one more stack of Goblin, so an Orange hero actually attacked Gotai in Town (C). I had only 50+
Goblins with Gotai and had to completely rely on the Ballista. The two Dwarven artifacts cut down a lot of spell
damages for me and prevented the Goblins from switching sides. (I should have given Gotai all the Centaurs!)

Note: In the real world, X-proof is even more powerful than X-

resistant. Now everybody is confused by the spell "proof" term
used in Barbarian Luck (5% proof per Luck) and and Dwarven
King artifact set (40% proof when you equip 2). Spell "proof"
here actually means damage reduction. This is totally different
from spell "resistance", which means a spell won't work at all,
and in the game it usually comes with a chance for it to happen.
For 100% resistance the game calls it "immunity".

At the same time my Stronghold town (A) was threatened by

another Orange hero, and a decent Red army was still coming
towards town (C). I decided to give up the new Necro town and
Town Portal Gotai back to save the HQ. Interestingly, the Red
hero decided to just flag the Skeleton buildings in front of town
(C), ignored the town and went after Gotai in town (A). Needless to say The Ballista took care of both heroes.
Even if you do lose town (C) to Red, you can take care of the Orange army first, and come down again to
reclaim town (C) from Red.

Your next goal is to take down town (D). There are two routes to it; you can either go west through the
grassland and pass the north garrison (2n), or return to town (C) and head west, to pass the east garrison (2e). I
picked the latter to better protect town (C), my double Gold Mine. Send a secondary hero after Gotai to flag the
resource mines and collect stuff on the ground whenever safe. The Mercury Lab just west of the garrison (2e) is
very useful. With the Ballista and some 1-stack Goblins you should have no problem.

You should be able to take town (D) during week 2, with some reasonable loss of your Centaurs. Two down!
Temporarily the Orange heroes are not coming anymore, so you can concentrate on Red.

There are roaming Red heroes around, so let's take care of town (E) immediately. Rush straight to town (E),
which is probably poorly defended because all the armies are out there. While you are rushing towards town (E)
the Red heroes could be a threat to any of your other towns, but fortunately they all somehow tried to run back
to defend the town instead of claiming one of your own. Of course, they will be late. Three down!

The problem actually comes after you take town (E). The Red
heroes are now free to chase your weak heroes, even occupying
your undefended towns. I sacrificed a weak hero to lure away
two Red armies into the Orange territory to buy Gotai a few
turns to return to Town (D). The AI took the bait, and even
better, if an AI is town-less when the new week comes, they are
considered to have lost the game and all of their remaining
heroes are erased. Goodbye to Red!

You are now a happy owner of 4 towns in three weeks. Your

income should be 10000+ G/turn, and even if you have not
flagged the rare resource mines, the 5000G silos from each
town should cover it. There is a nearby Sulfur Pit east of town
(E).

With a healthy income and bottle neck defense, your nail-biting days are over. Run Gotai to take the second
Stronghold town (B) now, flag the high-level creature building (3), and ship new units to Gotai with some mule
heroes. Troop shipping is critical early in the mission, and you should establish a constant stream of supplies
with multiple low-level heroes. I have marked the Stables with (S), which are conveniently located along the
way. Here are my recommended upgrades:

Tier 1: Goblin Trapper. You will kill the casters before they can act anyways, so there is no use of the Witch
Doctors.
Tier 2: Centaur Nomad. Again, if you let a stack reach them you have made a mistake.
Tier 3: None Use the non-upgraded Warriors early on. When you have Chieftains free up this slot for them.
Tier 4: Sky Daughter. After Hasting the Cyclops and Centaurs or slowing a key stack, your battle is usually
over. No need for close-range melee power.
Tier 5: Chieftain. When you have more than 50, split them up into two stacks. Their only job is to whip your
Centaurs or Cyclops.
Tier 6: PaoKai. Since you have so much cash you may as well buy them all. They are not terribly useful,
though.
Tier 7: Untamed Cyclop. With unprecedented crude power, this is the most crucial creature in the final battles.

It is also now a good time to dig up the Tear of Asha. You probably have visited quite a few obelisks so far, so
where is it? You can click on the picture below to find out. The location is actually fixed (at least in the current
patch, v3.0) so you will find the tear at exactly the same spot. Ship the Tear back to your starting town (A), not
(B), to build the Grail structure there. There is an obvious reason for this later.
Since the Orange still owns three towns, they remain a potential threat. When Gotai receive the next shipment of
units, with about 200 Centaurs, you should be able rush town (E) and (F) in a row. The AIs are more powerful
now and their Divine Vengeance can usually kill a large portion of your Centaurs. There is nothing you can do
about it (remember to equip two Dwarven King artifacts) - so just bite it and gladly take over the new towns.
(By the way, you can sell unwanted artifacts in the Market Place of Academy towns. I never knew about that!)

Now the Orange has only town (G) left and you are holding them to the throat. The Orange AI will still send out
scout heroes to annoy you, but more often than not they will get stuck by their own caravan right in front of
their town - for weeks! It is time to explore the map and pick up the goodies, and allow your speedy town
production to give you the superior army.

It is very tedious to ship troop to town (G) all the way from
town (A). It is possible to cut it short significantly with two sets
of two-way portals (a-a, b-b). Each set is guarded by a very
threatening group of creatures (like 80 Titans) that you
probably don't want to fight until your army size has grown up
significantly.

After witnessing how powerful Cyclops + Chieftains are back

in mission 3, you can take the tactics to extreme here. Deploy
nothing but Untamed Cyclops and Chieftains, and split up the
Chieftains into 6 equal stacks. The Chiefs do nothing but to
whip the Cyclops repeatedly. Now if you ever doubt how useful
this tactics is, you can take a sneak look of what's happening in
the final battle. Convinced? Now rush up your Cyclops to bash
the Titans non-stop! Use the area attack well and you can
damage two stacks at once. If Gotai's turn come up, either
throw a Call of Blood to the Cyclops, or whip them yourself if a
huge Titan stack's turn is coming up next. You will be amazed
by how fast these Titans go down!
As usual here comes a list of attractions. You don't have to visit them in this order and I actually skipped almost
all of the fights that does not lead to an useful artifact or a stat boost. You will end up at around level 30 and it is
more than enough to win.

Around town (A): There is a Boots of the Open Road at (4) to speed up your desert trip later on. The Boots of
Swift Journey, which is also very handy, is found at (5) just beside a useless Hill Fort. Note that the movement
bonus from these boots is added to your hero at the beginning of each turn, so you have to end the previous turn
with the appropriate boots already equipped. However, after the new turn starts, you may remove the boots and
put on your "battle boots" to receive the bonus from both!

Around town (B): If you took town (B) before the Haven town (E), you would receive a secondary objective of
taking town (E). Otherwise no such objective is given at all. In (D1) you should be able to pick up the Dragon
Scale Shield (of the Dragon set). The Dragon Flame Tongue (weapon of the Dragon set) is found at (D2). There
is an artifact merchant at (7), which I picked up a good Ring of Speed (+20% Initiative to all units). The
treasures that your Goblin friend tells you about is the area with a Sylanna Ancient at (8).

Around town (C): There is a two-way portal at (c), which takes you to an isolated area at the NW corner with
some random artifacts.

Around town (D): The Tear of Asha is marked with the red X. There is a large desert area to the east, where
you can find a Pyramid but you can't learn spells anyways. To the very east part of the desert you can find the
Robe of Sar Issus, which is completely useless to you so I am not going to mark it. There is also a Sphinx just
south of the bridge, but when I approached it with Gotai, it was not interested in playing games.

Around town (E): Flag the Lighthouse (9), which speeds up your journey on the river. You can build a ship in
the shipyard just east of town (G) at (10). With the ship you can access a few areas off the river shore.

Around town (F): There is a large optional area north of Town

(F). In there you can find a Memory Mentor (11), and another
two-way portal (d) leading you to a treasure area in the middle
of the desert, where more random artifacts can be collected.
There are just so many artifacts in the mission, and 95% of
them are totally useless. But if you ever feel you want more,
there is a Dragon Utopia directly below town (F).

At (12) hides a sidequest about recycling machine parts. Come

here with at least 1 Gremlin (upgraded or not, does not matter)
to repair the scattered golem torsos and limbs. The Golems are
repaired, and to show their gratitude they will all offer service
to the Skywalker! By the time I took them during month 3, I
collected a grand total of 2550 Iron Golems! I spent a lot of
cash upgrading them, but since they are so slow (initative = 7) I didn't use them at all. I guess if you are
seriously screwed in one of the final battles, these guys can survive long enough to save your day. Just SE of the
Golems (13) you can find two interesting artifacts, the Crown of Sar-Issus and the Cloak of the Death's Shadow
(enemy's morale, luck -2, as featured in Arantir's campaign).

Around town (G): There is another artifact merchant to the south, at (14). With the ship (or the Instant Travel
spell) you can access the two-way portal at (e). Just north of the portal (e) lies the Staff of Netherworld (enemy
creature initiatives -20%) of the Death Embrace set. The portal leads you to yet another isolated treasure area
with some stat boosts and an Astrologers Tower.

Around town (H): You can attack town (H) via an alternative route by landing at (15) and go around the desert
to collect three more stat boosts. There is another Memory Mentor (16) just before town (H).
 Let's talk about the artifact setup a bit. There are different approaches to
the final battles, and the way I like the best is the non-stop whipping
action from Cyclops + 6 Chieftains. Therefore, all I need is high
Initiative and Attack. You can use the Lion's Spirit set if you have all
three, to give Gotai the Empathy effect, even if your Morale and Luck is
already shooting through the effective cap of 5. (Empathy: Whenever a
friendly stack has a high morale, the hero's ATB is moved up by 10%.)
You can also let Gotai whip the Cyclops although it is going to hurt
much more. Well, long pain is not as good as short pain!

The two Dwarven artifacts are pretty decent for their magic damage
reduction and immunity to Slow. Also, you can equip quite a few pieces
from the Dragon's set that you have been collecting here and there. Its
set bonus statement might be misleading - the HP and stat bonus only
applies to Tier-7 units (Cyclops), not all 7 tiers of units. Since we are
using the Cyclops to bash everything up, this bonus is actually quite nice!
You can easily buy other useful artifacts to fill up the rest, either from the merchants or the Academy towns.

Take your time to accumulate a powerful army. The ideal timing to attack town (H) is when you have about
250-300 Chieftains, and you should have 60+ Untamed Cyclops to go with it. So what about the rest of the
army? You really don't need them. Keep whipping the Cyclops, and they will smash the world for you! I have
seen people reporting the wizard hero in Town (H) casting annoying Frenzy / Puppet Master non-stop. With this
Cyclop + 6 Chieftain strategy, the enemy hero hardly has a chance to cast anything. In my game the battle was
over before the enemy hero even acted! You can download my replay here.

Immediately after claiming town (G) the real final boss of the
campaign, Alaric, arrives just NE of (7). Alaric is a walking
little guy just like Nicolai. Although he is a small man, he does
have good stats and skills plus a powerful army. Alaric can
reach your town (B) when his turn comes up, so in my game I
used a mule hero to evacuate the entire town. This is why I
suggest to get the Tear of Asha building in town (A), or Aleric
will get it!

Obviously you now rush Gotai back to finish Alaric off. If you
are absolutely afraid of Divine Vengeance, now go to the
Memory Mentor (16) and get Expert Shatter Light. Personally I
don't think it is necessary because you are so powerful now -
take a look at your Gotai's stats. There is a +15 bonus on all
four categories! He hits harder than the Demon Sovereign, the
boss of boss in the original HoMM5!

With the set of two-way portals (a-a and b-b) and your Town
Portal spell, you should reach Alaric after just a few days. Alaric's army is roughly the same size as the town
(H) garrison, but he has better defense and the annoying "last man standing" feat. It is inevitable that your
Cyclop will swallow 1 shot of Divine Vengeance from Alaric, even another one from the Seraphs if you don't
finish that last one (with 1 HP) in time. Your Rage points should absorb most of the damage. With 6 Chieftains
Alaric only acted once, still. Here is the replay.

Congratulations of finishing this quite-difficult campaign! I have a feeling that Nival is going to seriously nerf
the insanely-powerful 1-Cyclop-6-Chieftain tactics in a coming patch, so have fun when it still works!

p.s. I have heard people reporting a minor bug. If you finish Gotai's turn on the door step of Town (H), the game
crashes.
 Heroes 5: Tribes of the East - development diary #3 - all about the Orc
Blood Rage ability
Hey all here is the third dev diary. This time its a deep look into the Blood Rage. Enjoy!

The Blood Rage is the unique racial ability that is linked to the Stronghold faction of the Orcs in Heroes 5:
Tribes of The East, just like Training is to Haven or Necromancy to Necropolis. It is a very might-oriented
ability that reinforces the Orcs natural traits.

Heroes of Might & Magic 5: Tribes of The East Orcs - Screenshots

The basic principle is that every creature in the Stronghold faction that has a dash of Demon blood in its veins
(i.e. all except Wyverns and Paokais) has a special Rage counter in combat.
When the creature performs offensive actions, its Rage level increases. Performing a melee attack will provide
more Rage than a ranged attack. If the creature waits or skips its turn, the Rage will decrease. It remains at the
same level if the creature just moves on the battlefield. Rage grants the creature with a damage absorbing
protection. Each time this protection is used in combat, the rage level decreases.
As soon as the Rage counter reaches a first threshold, the creature gains a special bonus, that will permanently
affect it for the current combat, unless its Rage counter passes under the threshold limit again. When the effect
is activated, the creature portrait will blink and a blood explosion will appear over the creature. The bonus name
and effect can be checked by right-clicking on the creature’s portrait in the Initiative Bar.

Two more thresholds can be reached by increasing the Rage level, allowing the creature to gain two more
special bonuses, to a maximum of three. Each Rage stage is displayed on the creature’s portrait in the Initiative
Bar as a small blood drop. Each bonus has an effect that is specific to the creature’s type.

The Blood Rage counter is set to zero at the beginning of each combat, though of course there are special
abilities, skills, perks and warcries that Orc heroes can learn to earn their creatures a Rage bonus or to increase
its growth rate…

We created this racial ability to make you feel the might of the Orcs when you are fighting with them. Basically,
the more you attack, the more powerful you are. It is a very impressive ability, especially when you can
effectively make your creatures boost each other on the battlefield.

Now, on with some technical details and basic rules in Heroes 5: Tribes of The East:

The 1st threshold is reached at 200 Rage Points (RP), the 2nd at 500, and the 3rd at 1,000.
The “Rage Shield” has its own hit points that are calculated when the creature is hit, and corresponds to a
fraction of the whole stack hit points. The stack looses the rage amount corresponding to the hit points that were
spent for the rage shield. Absorption percentage varies according to the commanding hero’s Blood Rage skill
level.
All creatures in the heroes army get +20 RP for a destroyed hostile stack (even a summoned one), and +30 for
a dead friendly one.
Individual creature Rage increase:

 Melee attack on an enemy: +100 RP

 Ranged attack on an enemy: +50 RP
 Spell attack on an enemy: +40 RP
 Harmful spell is cast on the creature: +10 RP (excluding damage-dealing spells)
 Using the Sacrifice Goblin (Shamans) or Swallow Goblin (Cyclops) ability: +60 RP
 Moving: 0 RP
 Using the Defend command: -30 RP
 Using the Wait command: -100 RP
 Skipping a turn due to bad Morale: -80 RP

Here are some examples of spells and creatures’ abilities influence on Rage:

 Blind: the creature looses -100 RP for every turn missed.

 Berserk: the amount of gained RP is doubled while the spell is active.
 Hypnotize: the creature looses -50 RP for every action it performs, instead of gaining them, while the
spell is active.
 Forgetfulness: the gained amount of Rage is decreased by 5/10/15/20 RP (depending on the expertise
level for the spell).
 The creatures’ abilities that move creatures back along the ATB bar (Bash, Warding Arrow, etc.)
decrease Rage by -20 RP.
 Fear: a scared creature looses -100 RP.
 Life Drain, Weakening Strike: every such attack decreases Rage by -20 RP.
 Orcs who have the Enrage ability gain +60 instead of +30 RP for each defeated friendly stack.
 Cowardice “ability” decreases Goblins’ Rage by -100 RP each time it is triggered.

And look below to see the bonuses earned to each creature type for reaching the Rage Point thresholds. Now
you can start working on tactics with the mighty orc faction!