It took me the whole Sunday to finish the first shard in the story (tutorial).

Then I checked the settings for a custom game and it seems there are like 10 or so more enemies to defeat in the campaign and the enemy is not sleeping?

I imagine a real battle where you win and lose some strongholds. This would take me a week or two on holiday to finish one shard :)

For some reason this game is highly addictive and I just finished reading all 44 pages of this guide:
http://guides.gamepressure.com/eadormastersofthebrokenworld/guide.asp?ID=20406

Now sitting here to be eager going home and apply the new knowledge to my army.


It is a mixed feeling like in Anno 1602 or Settlers2, you build up and build up to make the economy work, gather new ground and everyone is happy, then BAM mission objective reached and all your building/units are gone.

Are there actual endless shards like in Anno?
Can you revisit shards from the campaign, where you might haven't explored everything yet?

You can sort of play endless in the larger shards, if you don't go for the win. Or you can win faster once you get better at the game. The first shards are doable in under an hour, if you got straight for victory.

I don't think you can revisit shards. (I only played Genesis)

Thank you for the feedback.
I do get a little quicker with the basic build and getting new provinces becomes part of the routine :)

What is really a bad idea, I noticed yesterday, is to create a colossal map with one enemy. The enemies' turns take much longer and the map is so huge, you will never see and explore everything or meet the enemy.

Oh? I heard turns take longer in the new version, that would annoy me alot.

It feels like the enemies' turns take ~10min each.
Realistic is maybe up to 1min, that you sit there waiting for the AI to finish?

Every 1-2 day, I try to finish a shard in the campaign.

I just read this:
In the course of the campaign, the player can encounter up to 16 other masters in the Astral, and there are 12 different endings to explore.

Some shards take two, some one and some take three days or even more to finish.
I don't want to miss any buildings or hidden stuff for example yesterday I found the building plans for the arena in the labyrinth of one shard.

Exploring the shard close to 100% is very very time consuming, even with two heroes.

Now I got this quest from my little gremlin to find their wheel, which I do at the moment.

Thanks, I found the Hippodrome yesterday. It was listed as a reward if I conquer the shard, do I get to keep all those schematics for the next shard I attack?
What if I do not find the buildings, will I not get them as reward? I think I do...

What if I do not conquer any of the _optional_ shards, do I miss lots of units/spells whatever?

I had three of those non-occupied shards left before I started the attack on one of them. Two more and I have to attack one of the other masters?

If you win shard, you get all listed schematics till the end of campaign. Finding them in loot simply lets you use them "now" instead of "next shard".
Game wouldn't spawn advanced shards until you get prerequisite buildings on available shards. (So, if you lose shard, game would spawn new shard with the similar tech-level, maybe with the same buildings)

Brilliant!

I just watched that video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orbOeF4x0yM
Some only know they even exist, why do they bother me with every little ailments they got?!?!?

They should shut up and give me gold/gems :P

As some sort of feedback.

Once you have everything build up and the enemy doesn't cause any problem, you are about to quit the shard and lose all your items/heroes.

I usually do dungeon crawling to stretch the time of saying goodbye to my heroes a little.

The [arch]mage is the optimal start and can conquer rather quickly, after a slow start, using mostly AE-spells and with lots of stamina. No repair and thanks to zombies no need to refill the army. He is not so good against tough enemies like giants, golems or dragons.

[Berserker]Warrior is the perfect dungeon crawler, once you have 5 Constitution (+2 reg) and 5 Combat (round attack), you can wipe out entire armies. With a few good items like the tireless hammer or the soul eating axe. He can kill dragons and all sorts of stuff.

It would be great, if you could keep some heroes and items? Or instead of having the map revealed at your home shard, if you have to defend yourself, you get to keep the heroes(set back to lvl1) and items you collected?
The home shard could be something you can visit any time to explore and look for items, even if there is no enemy attack?

Lets say the home shard has two states.
It is either under attack, everything is set back and your already existing heroes are set to lvl1, they keep their items though.
You are exploring, it is in the state you last left it after a "peaceful" visit without enemy.

Hydra fight :)
http://i.imgur.com/LaSRaQY.jpg

Once you have all the buildings at your disposal, there are only large or big shards with up to five enemy masters that take a very very long time to conquer.
I would love to still see small or even tiny shards available in the campaign.

For a test, I clicked next turn until the main campaign finishes. This happens after about 70-80 turns.
I would love if there wouldn't be such a limit and you could just play on until you found all the parts or finished the campaign otherwise?

//edit: OK, this adds up to eight random sized shards to the astral each turn (before it was 3 and related to the amount of masters for the size).
astral.zip
Install:
Extract the zip archive
Create the folder structure:
C:\GOG Games\Eador - Master of the Broken World\data\scripts\common.inc\astral\
Place the files in there.

Most of the campaign is world size based, by fighting smaller shards you might be able to stretch the end a little.

p.s.
end last regular big shard turn: http://i.imgur.com/heikvyn.jpg
back in astral
average shard: http://i.imgur.com/aZy1IGq.jpg
large shard: http://i.imgur.com/7S9l5L1.jpg
tiny shard: http://i.imgur.com/AcmThMT.jpg
big shard: http://i.imgur.com/znr3vCm.jpg

I kind of cheated to show the turnlimit in the astral gui statistics. Turns out to be 90, before the demons attack: screen

p.s. I start over with my campaign and actual make some decisions this time. Staying all neutral just ends in chaos and you cannot win, it looks like you have to kick some ass to progress the story...

//edit: In some event you can postpone the demon attack a little, but not much.