The Necromancer → The Temptation

Before going into the details of the first map I'll discuss useful skills to take.

Markal starts with necromancy and leadership + diplomacy. His speciality is that neutral undead will always offer to join
him. Since all undead units actually have a constant 0 morale and will join Markal no matter what, this skill line isn't
particularly useful, unless you are going to use living units from other races. If you want to convert units from other races
to undead, you can go for Herald of Death, but you can do it in Necro towns as well. Anyways, make diplomacy a low
priority on your list (as you will have tons of undeads joining you for free!).

As for spell schools Markal starts with raise dead, and you get access to at least 1 town you can build up in every level so
any spell school you choose will probably be of use. I took Dark magic and had all the dark magic spells except blind by
the end of level 3. By the same token if you want to take ballistics you'll have access to a blacksmith in the last 4 levels of
the campaign.

It isn't worth going for Howl of Terror because you will waste a lot of points on useless skills, and you're unlikely to reach
level 30 over the course of the campaign. Even if you do get this ultimate skill to fight the final boss, it won't really give
him bad morales as he probably will come with Expert Leadership. Playing a spell caster probably is the way to go with
Markal as your spell power stat is going to outstrip all the others by a fair margin by the time you're on level 5. Attack is
very useful for Markal, too, because it comes with the feat Battle Frenzy to boost your skeleton archers' power by 67%,
plus archery to give you another 20%.

For the heroic difficulty, since patch 1.2 the final boss of this campaign has been boosted up quite a bit. So you probably
want to pick Dark (be sure to get Mark of Necromancer later), Summoning (for Phoenix) and Sorcery to maximize
Markal's effectiveness.

Patch 1.3 toned down Raise Dead by increasing its mana requirement by 50%, and each successive cast will lower your
raised stack's maximum HP by 20%, all the way down to 1 after 5 casts. So you have to play smarter now.

Objectives:

 Reach Vigil
 Avoid Enemy Patrols
 Markal must survive

Carryover:

 Markal (Max level: 10)

Bonuses at start:

 20 Skeleton Archers
 Breastplate of Eldritch Might (+2 spellpower)
 Suffering (Dark Magic)
I would choose the breastplate as it allows you to cast raise dead with greater effect (reducing casualties in fights with
neutrals). On higher difficulties the extra skeleton archers helps quite much for the first few fights. Only suffering will
carry over, however you're very likely to pick it up later on in another mage guild, and you will always have better spells
to cast, such as Raise Dead, Phantom Force, and Mass Slow.

At the start of this scenario you should head up and collect the skeleton unit. The Magi Hut is important for telling you
where Orange Player's locations and moves are. You should also collect the Liches that are displayed a few days to your
east before heading up to avoid Orange. Get the Skeleton Archer feat from Necromancy as soon as possible.

You'll pick up new objectives whenever you get too close to an Orange Hero, which is to escape pursuit. "Too close" is
defined by proximity; effectively if the orange player can reach you in a turn, or knows how to get very close to you in a
turn it will give you that objective. The detection range is based upon the difficulty that you play the game at, and they
can detect more on higher difficulties.

Important: This mission is infamously bugged since the release, and even patch 1.3 has not fixed the problem! The bug
involves a stationary eastern patrol, blocking the player's path permanently. Nothing can save the situation so the player
has to restart the mission. This bug is triggered by the player loading a save while the patrol is on the eastern path -- doing
so will paralyze its patrol function and it won't move forever. Therefore, NEVER load a save during the first two turns of
this mission, and whenever the patrol goes east.

The best way to avoid Orange is to take routes that just don't go near them, as they're set to patrol in certain areas until
they detect you. If they do detect you, sometimes moving fast even in the path they will take is enough to avoid them
catching you. (They pause right when they detect you, and don't act again until the turn after). Neutral stacks will not
protect you from them however, and if they catch you, you don't get a fight but lose automatically with a cut scene. Just
for your information, every time the patrol is alerted, they start to go back to their default position -- the western patrol
goes south, and the eastern patrol goes east (refer to the double-headed white arrows on the minimap.)

Your objective on the above ground map is to avoid the patrols and make it to the subterranean gate in the bottom right.
Pick up the Boots of Swift Journey as soon as possible (click on the picture below); it is located at the end of a western
branch off the middle road that you come from. On the very north of the map, you can pick up several more liches - very
handy in larger battles.

Before reaching the other side of the river, try to visit the Witch Hut on the NW region, and a knowledge +1 stat bonus
south of the Witch Hut. The key to shake off the east-side patrol is to stay far away from him. When he reaches the
northern part of the map, sprint through his patrol passage at once. Be careful do not let him detect you before he goes far
enough, or he will turn back on the next turn.
On the eastern road you can fight several water elementals to upgrade your units at a Hill Fort. Further south you can pick
up some vampire lords, which are very useful units as their attack triggers no retaliation, and they recover health (even
revives the fallen ones) from dealing damage. Take the detour to visit the watermill and pick up the resources east of it, if
you think the patrol isn't on your tail.

After crossing the river, you can visit the stat bonus and pick up one more group of vampire lords. If you are scaring
enemies away, don't let them run away as they will feed your skeleton archer pool. The Orange patrol will be activated
once you cross the river, so try to be fast here as well. The Orange patrol sometimes roams to the underground portion,
but they are not really chasing you down there.

Once underground there are two Purple heroes on side routes to your west, including a dungeon town in the SW if you
wish to take it. There are also a few mines around, many of them guarded by black dragons! These are all there just to
help you reach the level cap, and perhaps teach you a few extra spells. There are also stat bonuses close to the purple
heroes.

What is important is the subterranean entrance in the top right, which takes you up into the Griffon Empire near Vigil.
Along the way you can pick up a large stack of skeleton archers, but by this time you should be able to match that number
already. After the cut scene you'll face the boss of this mission, which shouldn't be any problem providing you've been
collecting neutral undead stacks, and minimizing losses with frequent use of the Raise Dead spell, as well as one-unit
stacks to block off incoming creatures (especially effective against large creatures).

The Necromancer → The Attack

Objectives:

 Find and Restore Lorekeep

 Markal and Godric must survive

Carries Over:

 Markal and Godric (Max Level: 20)

At the beginning of the scenario, you must choose a bonus from one of these three:

 Lich: 2
 Wight: 1
 Sack of Endless Gold

I took the Wight, although whether you go with the

Wight or the Liches is down to player preferences and
the skills you have. As you don’t get access to an
undead town for some time on this map the sack of
endless gold might help you build up a haven army if
you’d rather do that.
At the start of this scenario you get two heroes, and one very low level Haven town. There are four Orange heroes
patrolling the ocean, each with a quite-substantial army. There are two possible places for them to land. One is now
blocked by a stack of Colossus just beside your town, and the Orange hero usually does not land here early. (Note: the AI
can attack the stack of Colossus on their own and come after you, but it happens rarely. The rule of thumb is never stand
close to the beach.) The other landing shore is to the very west of your island / continent, beside a Mage Vault.

The four Orange heroes will eventually come to you; the time they show up depends on difficulty. On heroic they will
come as soon as the third week (or even quicker). This means that at least for now, you can leave the Haven town
undefended, and flag as many mines as you can to build up some Haven military. You'll want to at least have access to
Cavaliers to put up a good fight. A combination of all the undead, plus as many human stacks as you can fit in is probably
the best route to take. Also, if you've spent some time building up Godric back in C1M5, then he can usually crush any
Orange hero (including the boss of this mission) for you. Actually, on heroic the Orange heroes might be a little too
difficult for the still-mediocre necromancer Markal. You can give all Markal's army to Godric to get rid off the Orange
when they get close.

If you head east first, you can eventually pick up a stack of Wights that will make the subsequent neutral creatures rather
easy. Still, try to flag the Saw Mill to the north and the Ore Pit to the west as soon as you can. There is a stack of tough
Titans guarding the Unicorn's Bow (no out-of-range penalty for ranged units). Don't forget to pick this artifact up before
fighting the mission boss. To the west, beside a windmill there is a stack of archers who tend to join you. Let them join
and pass them to Godric.

One of the spells that has been improved through the patches is the
"Fire Trap" spell. Now it works in a limited area, and if a tile is already
occupied by a creature or another trap, then there are less possible tiles
for the new trap to go. You can do some serious damage to large
creatures this way!

After fully exploring your base, two Orange hero should start to arrive.
After defeating them, you can send Markal onto a boat and try to sail
northeast. There are another two Orange patrol boats which follow a set
path and won't deviate from it; you can avoid them entirely just be
watching their route, or you can just destroy them. Occupy Lorekeep
(NE town, see mini-map below).

There are two small islands that the orange patrol boats travel around; they have some stat increasing locations, so
they’re worth stopping off for some time. The left of the two islands also contains a cartographer which will help you
find all the useful locations on the map. The sea has quite a lot of floating logs. Patch 1.3 increased the wood requirement
for Haven towns quite a lot, so you may find them very handy. If you cannot make the level cap later, there is a Siren to
help you. You can also find a Sylanna's Ancient (level up tree) just beside the Saw
Mill on the northern continent.

If you bought the map from the cartographer (4000G), you can see where Lorekeep is,
and you can see where the undead are to collect if you need to bolster your forces. The
best approach is through the Ghosts on the bottom right as it involves very few fights and gives you access to many
undead. Also, there is a good stack of Liches west of Lorekeep.

The road to Lorekeep is guarded by quite a large stack of mages. There is no way around them (as another mage blocks
off the alternative route), so you have to charge them head on. You should be fine with mass slow and raise dead.

Once you take Lorekeep you get a new objective to build it up to a Citadel (2nd-level wall). When this is completed the
Titans guarding the monolith one-way entrance will run in fear - you should now have an army sufficiently large to walk
through it and decimate the final Wizard and take the town of Hikm. If you’ve collected all the undead on the main
island where Hikm and Lorekeep are located you should have no trouble. A fine mixture of Necro and Haven army led by
a level-20 Godric (actually he is level 34, if you leveled up to the cap in C1M5) would be an overkill.

Heroic Considerations

Playing this map on heroic is much the same as playing it on the other difficulties, the stacks that Markal can pick up are
larger so it’s still possible to keep up with Orange and not be outnumbered. My only advice is to make sure you get
every single stat upgrade, and take the time to build up both town's mage guilds (Lorekeep is unfortunately capped at level
2) so you have access to as many spells as possible. Don't miss out the Witch Hut in the NW region.

The Necromancer → The Invasion

Objective:

 Obtain staff of the Netherworld

 Obtain Cloak of Death’s Shadow
 Obtain Ring of the Unrepentant
 Markal and Isabel must survive

Carryover:

 Markal (Max Level: 26)

 Isabel (Max Level: 26)

Bonuses at start:

 5 Vampire Lords
 5000 Gold
 Curse of the Netherworld

Markal's specialty is utilized to its fullest extent in this mission. This is also probably the only mission that playing heroic
will grant you an easier gameplay (pre-patched game only, though), because you will receive much larger neutral undead
stacks all over the places, ranging from hordes of Vampire Lords to Packs of Bone Dragons.

After Godric, you get Isabel to help you in this mission. If you have spent some effort to develop her in the first campaign
(for example, ATK + DEF > 50, Expert Light magic with Master of Wrath, Expert Luck, Expert Attack with Retribution,
etc.), she actually owns this mission single-handedly even on heroic. Since patch 1.3 weakened Markal significantly, you
might actually need her to fight some tough battle where your Raise Dead simply can't keep up.

This is also the first Necro mission that offers you a decent set of starting bonuses for different strategies in the necropolis
campaign. If you didn’t obtain Curse of the Netherworld spell on an earlier map, you might want to take it because there
are several goal-oriented heroes that have large armies for you to fight. Also, patch 1.3 boosted the power of this spell a
little, so it is not a bad alternative of Raise Dead, which are rendered pretty useless in big battles now. If you did take
Curse of the Netherworld, then take the Vampire lords if you wish to rush at the start, or take the gold if you prefer a
slightly slower build up. By the way, on heroic, in more recent patches the scripted AI wizards tend to drop you the
Armagaddon spell non-stop, so you have to finish them off as fast as possible.

You start on a small island, which includes the town of Lorekeep, a

Necropolis now at level 11, and you can get upgraded skeletons and zombies
from the start. Isabel starts on the same island, in front of a new town
Newpost, sadly it starts at level 1 and is a haven (the only one on the map) so
it’s not particularly useful except for making money. If you should get
attacked on the island though, Newpost can get a castle and Lorekeep can only
get a citadel.

There are various undead stacks to collect, so you can gather a quick army.
There are quite a few on your starting island, and more on the northern
continent, where your enemies are plenty as well. A good place to pick up undead is the area east and west of Ziyad’s
landing point. (Ziyad is the wizard town directly above Lorekeep). You can get bone dragons, vampires, ghosts and
archliches.

Ziyad, the rightmost mage town, and the closest to where Markal starts, is probably the only plausible place to rush to. It
comes with the additional benefit of giving you the Staff of the Netherworld (-20% initiative to enemies) when you take it.
This has the added advantage of allowing you to convert three of the mage towns on the map into Necropolis towns,
making this the best way to compete with orange. When you make a landing close to the city, the wizard staged around
this city will rush back to defend. It is possible to take the city before the wizard comes back. Otherwise, you will have to
do a castle siege against the wizard army, and possibly suffer at least one Armaggadon; three actually sounds normal! If
you have built up Isabel well, then you can actually score a much better victory with her. But remember to give the staff
to Markal. This staff was named something else, but fixed to its original name in patch 1.3. The conversion happens when
you visit the new Academy town with Markal (with the staff in his possession), and leave the town. You have to pay
10,000 gold as well.

Important: Everything inside the town will be lost when the curse happens. So never leave any army or hero in there. If
you leave Isabel in the city, she will disappear and you lose the mission automatically!

When you convert a town it starts at level 1. However, there are plenty of mines around and you should not have to worry.
You can also leave them as academies, as they’re quite high level. (but then you cannot learn dark magics from the
mage guild; they are not offered in Academy towns.) Once you have the staff you get a secondary objective, which is to
convert the three mage towns into necropolis. You do not get great rewards by doing this, but it has obvious benefits to
your fighting orange. So even if you lose a town back to them, they can only hire low level undeads! A secondary
objective that triggers on the next day is you have is to gather 1000 skeletons, which is optional. It is quite hard not to get
1000 skeletons, though, as you fight so many enemies here and there. You also get one of the best cut scenes of any army
when you do it.

As soon as you take your first Academy town, a green Sylvan army spawns. It becomes a secondary objective that Isabel
is meant to complete -- destroying the boat of elven troops. Although the custscene implies that Isabel has to do it, it’s
perfectly fine to attack them with Markal, which is probably eaiser before patch 1.3. Their goal appears to be to take
Newpost and Lorekeep. Also, during the battle against them the dynamic battle mode is turned on (you have limited time
to make moves).

The second artefact, the cloak of death’s shadows can be found in the top of the three mage towns. The westmost town
doesn’t contain anything, and taking it is just to prevent it from trying to kill you. You can regardless corrupt it into a
necropolis to suit Markal's twisted mind.

The final artefact is in the top right corner of the map. You have to travel through three garrisons to get there; however,
the third garrison is the final large fight, so if you can survive it you should be safe. To complete the level you will need
to have 20 bone / spectral dragons on you. You can either bring it with you, or collect it afterwards.

The level isn’t quite as easy as that however, because Orange spawns goal oriented heroes, from a monolith one-way
exit, roughly halfway between the two mage towns that contain artefacts. Their goal is to kill Markal if they get a chance.
They never attack the Lorekeep / Newpost island you start on when Markal isn’t on it. On heroic, the army that spawns
with them are pretty tough -- so you better quickly gather undeads around to fight them, and you can always give the
undeads to Isabel and watch the massacre. You get no skeleton archer this way, but you may also save 2/3 of the undead
army from Armagaddon.

By the way, the Sylanna's Ancient (level-up tree) is still in the same place where you can find it in the last mission -- just
south of Lorekeep. It is going to be there again in the campaign finale. What a forgetful tree!

Final Note: Some players reported that even after they collected the bone dragons, they cannot complete the mission. If
that does not work, try to give all necromancer artifacts to Markal as early as possible, and install the latest patch (and
restart the mission).
Heroic Considerations

When I played it I went for the wrong town first, and I believe this added two months of game time because of not having
an army large enough to defeat Jhora. Be very careful when casting direct damage spells, because most of the heroes have
magic mirror, and magic resistance, and you might be better off just attacking, even though Markal is a spellcaster.
Alternatively cast raise dead and try to take no losses as you start with a single necropolis and orange has 4 higher level
academies at the start. Finally, if you go for a rush, don’t skip undead stacks that you see, even if it takes you a turn to
pick them up off an island, it’s the best way to stay competitive at the start until you can transform some of their towns.

The Necromancer → The Regicide

Objective:

 Find and Defeat Cyrus.

 Markal and Isabel must survive.

Carries Over:

 Markal (Level Cap: 30)

Bonuses at start:

 20 Spectres
 4 Liches
 Puppetmaster
Frankly, if you haven’t got Puppetmaster by now, you did something wrong or you were very unlucky in the previous
scenarios, so all you get from the lv 5 mage guilds were Curse of the Netherwind. If that happens, you should definitely
take the spell now, to make your life much easier later.

If you already have the spell, maybe the Liches are your best choice, as they do damage more often, and are less likely to
die than the spectres (where you rely on their evasion). It doesn’t really matter which you take though, you start with 20
bone dragons, 900 skeletons, and 100 skeleton archers anyway, so you have no problem with such an army.

This is a semi-maze map, and there is no town. You have to run around
collecting tents and skeleton archers, so that you can pass through border
guards. Beyond different colors of guards you will find new keymaster tents,
and new Magi Huts to show you where to go. Sometimes there are monoliths
to help you get there faster. It’s impossible to actually get lost, and you’re
not on a time limit. Whether intentionally or not, Nival made the final boss of
this mission very weak. In more recent patches his stat points become ZERO
throughout (plus a few artifacts).

Try to kill every stack you see. You shouldn’t have much trouble taking
them down with your 20 bone dragons (as Markal says in map 3, they should tip the balance). Near the start some Titans
will appear in front of you. More will come later, but all of them are weak and there is only one group of Titans that is
quite powerful, and it is an optional battle.

You can skip the resources, perhaps except the gold and a few mercury jars. Don't miss the artefacts, obviously. There are
several places to recruits troops along the way, and of course, neutral undead still join you. I would take exp whenever
you get a treasure chest, just because it’s difficult to hit the level cap on this map, even with Expert Enlightenment. In
fact, it is quite impossible reach level 29 on this map.

From your starting point, go west and then north. Follow the road, and after collecting the first keymaster tent, you want
to head down the right path after going through the monolith two way. If you turn north at the first intersection, you will
reach a dead end but you can collect more experiences, war machines, artifacts and skeleton archers. If you head as east as
you can, you can then go north to find the red border guard, and then follow that route to the next tent and Magi Hut.

After going through the monolith one way by the blue tent, you have two choices now. If you head to the right and down,
you can collect two groups of plague zombies. However, let me tell you that there are better undead stacks waiting to join
you, and eventually you will need to drop a stack - and that's usually the most-useless zombies. So I would kill them now
for the experiences. On the road on the left you can fight some stacks for more skeleton archers.

If you carry on travelling south you’ll get to the blue boarder guard. If go left first, you can get some extra exp, another
artefact and a bone dragon post. Also, at the trading post sell everything that isn’t mercury for gold.

Now back track and head right, and you’ll come to the next boarder guard almost straight away, the only thing to say
about this part is that the death knights might not join you. Apparently they don’t always (though they should). On
heroic you get about 28, which is a pretty good number (for a tier 6 stack).

Form this point you don’t really need directions, just head down the routes that you haven’t already explored to find
border guards and tents and follow the route around until you get teleported into the centre where the stairway is.
The stairway leads to a single area, with Cyrus waiting for you. Just before you take the stairway, two more stacks of
Titans spawn. On your back is a tough stack (55 Titans on heroic), but it is optioanl. On your front is a much weaker
stack.

The Cyrus fight shouldn’t be too hard as you can get to a mana well right before it, and should have collected a
substantial number of undead. This fight is a lot easier than the mages you have to fight in map 3, and you should be
going in with at least equal if not a better army than Cyrus starts with.