What was once a verdant forest around Cyndrum has been transformed into the Asag, a diseased land with rivers of dead fish and deep, oozing scars. Though it may initially seem empty, the Asag is full of diseased, hateful and hungry creatures. It is home to some of the new creatures players will face in Fallen Enchantress.
In this creature feature, we will introduce some of those monsters and give some hints on how to fight them.
These great snakes are known for their inhuman reflexes and deadly poison. They are unlikely to miss when they attack, but players are best to use champions and experienced units if they hope to hit the Naja. Less accurate units will find themselves whittled down by the Naja's venom while Naja deftly dodges their attacks.
Plaguestlker's already considerable speed is augmented during their first action in combat, where they get an increase to movement and attack that allows them to quickly cross the battlefield and close with your units. Your archers won't be safe to sit back and pick plaguestalkers off. You are best to use heavily defended units whose armor will keep the plaguestalkers poisoned teeth and claws from finding flesh.
Said to have once been priests in Cyndrum these men are able to use life and death magic. They can heal their allies by siphoning away their injuries and inflict that pain on their enemies. Though they are cursed by the suffering of the world around them, the creatures of the Asag won't attack them and often come to their defense. When fighting a Haunter players should be careful, a nearly dead Haunter is more dangerous than one that isn't injured at all. If players are going to attack a Haunter, they are best to kill him.
Ritualist's don't want to fight you. They want to summon a Death Demon that will kill you instead. It doesn't matter what else is happening on the battlefield, if plaguestalkers are chewing on your legs, if a Dark Wizard is replacing your peasants with bonfires, if Abeix himself is eating your champions. Your first task should be to kill any Ritualist's on the battlefield or you risk making a bad situation much worse. This is what archer divisions and swarms of fireballs were made for.
At Red Spring 10,000 victims were sacrificed in a ritual to appease Curgen. A spell bound these men to the titan but he ignored the offering. Now they roam the world, trapped between death and eternal service to a titan that no longer exists. They seek to pass on their curse by killing others, in the hope that doing so will end their suffering.
Scrap Golems are relics of ancient battles. They attempt to repair themselves with makeshift parts and continue fighting a war that only they remember and where everyone else is an enemy. Scrap Golems can be dangerous enemies to starting units, but their injuries don't allow them to stand up to stronger attacks. They are also a good source of metal, and players looking to scrape some extra metal together would do well to hunt down rogue Scrap Golems for their parts.
Ignys are less powerful than fire elementals, but still pack a powerful attack. Their fire damage won't be blocked by most armor, and they are immune to fire spells. It is best to outfit your champions with items that protect from fire and weapons that do cold damage. Banishing weapons provide bonuses against elementals and make quick work of minor elementals like the Ignys.
Magic was never evenly distributed across Elemental. In some places it lay thin and worn, and in others it was deep and thick. In these most magical, most sacred, places elementals formed as guardians and grew larger than any elementals summoned by men. These elemental lords are so powerful that they survived the cataclysm and having magic bound into the shards. But their sacred homes are now empty, and the power that fed them for so long has been stripped away. Some have been driven mad by it, others continue to act as guardians, but they all hate the titans that imprisoned the magic of Elemental and the channelers that would make use of it.
Abeix is one of these elemental lords. All but the most powerful should avoid the Bhinadmi Fissure, but if you go to challenge Abeix, bring armies and your highest level champions. Bring weapons that weaken armor to get through Abeix's rocky hide and powerful damage spells. Abeix is unlikely to fall victim to spells he can resist, you cannot blind him or freeze him. But lightning and fire may cause some damage if you bring enough of it.
Actually, 3 variations would decrease the repetitiveness of encountering snakes.
That would be my fault. If you are going to make animations/rig you might as well use them. But I probably shouldn't have included all the snake creatures in FE in one post. It does look a little unbalanced in a small sampling.
Its not about being a snake lover. Its about solving a few problems efficiently. I wanted to cut the minor fire elemental and replace it with something more flavorful, i wanted more variety in the units the player fights, i wanted a unit type to model high damage, high dodge but low hp units. Snake models worked well for all of them. I didn't want to overuse them (I don't like all the versions of wolves and spiders in WoM, some will be cut in FE so we can focus on less but more distinct variations), but just adding one seemed a wasted. I decided that 3 was a good balance (for better or worse).
Or maybe I'm just trying to overcompensate for some personal shortcoming.
Edit: Lol! Ok, I'll just assume that it's not a representative sample, then.
And I agree that the re-use of animations makes sense.
How to make the adventure tree specify it's the best way to level up champions.
Few ideas:
Looting or Lore: you get better results from finding things. That sword may be a broadsword for one faction, but a Jet Broadsword of Life Drain for a faction that knows what it is.
Maybe techs that unlock special abilities for heroes with level
Adventurer's Guilds to spawn adventurers more easily in your territory (you are allowed to bring back some things from FFH)
Maybe tech trees can tie together, like a Magic+Adventure combination might be a magic lore to find magical items, etc.
As for the initiative system- I like the idea, though the numbers and its relation to HP will need to be tested.
These creatures look very cool and interesting...very much a step in the right direction!
Since it's somewhat off topic here, I'll keep it short but I take the opportunity of Derek reminding us of the major options of the game:
...to say that I hope FE will be different of WoM 1.3 on one specific point:
Minor factions can be made very interesting, diverse and even essential to a diplomacy/soft-power kind of player. But we'll talk more about this when the topic will get its own journal by Derek.
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