As of last night, the Dark Forest has been defoliated! I went back to my save JUST BEFORE I put the bounty and started attacking the Witch King's castle. From there, I built up my kingdom even more, including recruiting Dwarves for their help with building as well as their ballista towers. At the same time, I put up Explore Bounties for the entire map where my Rangers didn't explore and took out all of the Daemonwood I could find. In the end, only 3 of those were left when I destroyed the Witch King's castle. I placed a 1000 gold Attack Bounty on the Witch King to keep track of him. Strangely enough, he made the idiotic decision to make a frontal assault on my kingdom only to get turned into a pincushion by several ballista towers! XD

Last night, Trade Routes had officially been finalized! Freakin' crazy mission but I managed to hold out until one of the nations agreed to a trade contract. Took me about 37 days in-game. Biggest game-savers in this case? My Cultists, Priestess, Dwarf, and Warriors of Discord. The former 2 level up fast and become forces to be reckoned with. The last hero type ended up being able to take down dragons with a little healing at high levels. :O

And as of a few minutes ago, Deal with the Demon has been struck! Tried to follow your advice the closest I could, Bookwyrm. However, by Day 35 I thought I wouldn't make it in time being at 30k gold, so I took a play out of my dad's book (in real life) and hit up the Casino (we live not that far from Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, two of the most prestigious casinos in the US, if not the world). I managed to successfully roll Gold twice, Red about 3 or 4 times, and Blue about 5 times, rounding out the money until I just needed to have my Tax Collectors deliver the last 1 or 2 thousand needed. Completed that mission on Day 37. Phew!

Let me say, this much, honestly: In reality, I am no fan of gambling. I only do it in video games where I can save when I win and reload if I lose. I am no fan of taking chances with my real life money. In addition, I am not a fan of lootboxes or similar mechanics in video games, which are essentially unregulated gambling. I am in fact tempted to write to senators in my home state about such practices and see if the state of Connecticut will enact some regulations towards such to prevent any gamers from getting hoodwinked of their hard-earned cash.

Congrats on the various victories!

Deal with the Demon: Day 35 is a bit late to be having only 30k gold, but it might still have been doable depending on your income. One of the tricks here is to remember that the more you spend, the further away the goal is, so try to make the spending count. Of course, the faster the map gets cleared, the sooner you can set up the money train and just sit back to let it roll. Save scumming is the easy way to finish the mission in 1 Day or so. :)

SO CLOSE! Almost beat "The Fertile Plain" last night. Got to the last wave and then I lost. One thing I found working well was utilizing Paladins, a Blacksmith and a Wizards Guild. The downside? While Lightning Storm easily wipes out a lot of the waves of monsters, it's not very cost effective. Unless I can find an alternative or a way to generate lots of money to keep casting Lightning Storm or build up my base, I'm not sure how to beat the final wave.

Part of using Lightning Storm is looking for larger groups of monsters, and part is aiming for monsters with low resistance. One lightning storm will shred every minotaur you can catch in it, but medusas won't even notice it. Perhaps you can put an Inn or some other cheap building in an area for monsters to cluster around, then nail the group of them.

One way to help get your heroes in the path of a wave is to tag a few of the monsters in front with a bounty while the monsters are still a distance outside of your base. Your heroes notice the bounty, go for it, and the rest of the monsters head right into (what is hopefully) the meat grinder.

Tight clusters of ballista towers are a great defense. They are relatively durable and a tight cluster can let them cover each other. You can get almost 2 baillista towers per lightning storm.

Don't be afraid to build multiples of a given guild. It can be worth the inflated cost of a second (or third!) warrior's guild to get another pack of paladins running around.

Ballista towers aren't available for that mission. Can't have non-human heroes for "The Fertile Plain." :(

And The Fertile Plain has been settled! The keys for me here?
1) Having 2 Wizards Guilds, one of which being level 3, and recruiting a fair number of Wizards from both.
2) Having 2 Warriors Guilds and a Temple of Dauros, the former filled with Paladins.
3) Max-level Blacksmith and Marketplace, the former fully researched and the other up to Rings of Protection.
4) Rogues Guild with one Rogue as long as I could keep him going to spearhead destroying the two monster lairs by my kingdom. Also kept the guild fully upgraded in case I needed to use Extort in a pinch.

I managed to save enough gold for 2 or 3 charges of Lightning Storm which helped soften up the final wave, namely killing the Cyclops. My Paladins, with fully upgraded and enchanted equipment, tanked the other guys while my Wizards whittled them down from a short distance. Lost a number of buildings towards the end but no Paladins or Wizards (who were fairly high level, one Paladin reaching level 10), but I won, so that's what counts. :D

Whoop whoop! Go you!

Wizards can be absolutely amazing when they get some levels. It is just incredibly painful getting that slow, fragile, lazy bag of bones to get those levels.

Yeah, otherwise all you'll hear is "I'm meltiiiing!!!" more often than not. Get a Library going, though, and they become close to walking nuclear bombs. :O

On that note, here are the Expert-level quests I have left.
1) Wrath of the Liche Queen. Seems EVERY medieval fantasy game has to have one part of the game dealing with undead, I swear! Having trouble getting around this.
2) Tomb of the Dragon King. It's almost like Skyrim except these dragons are less annoying and a bit more dangerous.
3) Slay the Mighty Dragon. May have to do some save-scumming to find where I need to go in this mission and then go from there. That's what I did in "Quest for the Holy Chalice" to find the site of the objective and beat it from an earlier save file.
4) Legendary Heroes. Found a barrow. Destroyed it. Regretted it. Sounds like I'm supposed to find and destroy them simultaneously but I could use more pointers.
5) Brashnard's Ultimate Sphere of Destruction. Seriously, I am having Trouble wrapping my head around this one.
6) The Siege. Looks like interrupting caravans is the way to go but how exactly to go about that?
7) Darkness Falls. They're just coming it of the woodwork in a flash!
8) The Valley of the Serpents. Trying to save the Bungalows AND destroy those enemy structures? Hoo boy...
9) Balance of Twilight. Just... weird.

I have yet to touch The Wrath of Krolm, and obviously unlock the other secret quests.

No progress as far as Advanced quests. Blows my mind that I've beaten two Expert quests so far but not the Advanced ones I haven't beaten. :o

No Krypta temples, so Paladins it is! Depending on how fast the enemies hit your base, you might need to recruit a few warriors to hold you until you can get paladins.

I'd probably avoid Wizards so they don't get themselves killed on vampires. Seeing a wizard teleport in and burn a vampire to ashes before it can respond is a glorious sight, and seeing a wizard ever so slowly limp away from a pack of vampires is an amusing sight (fun fact, wizard walk speed is ever so slightly faster than vampire walk speed!), but seeing a wizard walk up to a vampire and commit suicide on the magic reflection is a depressing sight.

Something interesting that I saw in a guide: dragons actually have a hard time killing skeletons. Dragons use ranged attacks, and skeletons have an absurdly high ranged evade stat. Priestesses!

I seem to recall that clusters of ballista towers were also handy, but I haven't played either of these maps in quite a while.

Gnomes might be helpful to scurry around and repair your buildings quickly?

Resign yourself to a heaping helping of awful. This map is going to be a slog and depending on how the barrows spawn it might not even be a feasible win. You don't instantly lose when time runs out, but iirc a permanent earthquake starts and doesn't stop until you either win or lose.

I don't remember much about this map except hating it. Don't make barbarians, because you need your few scouts to actually scout instead of following a barbarian around.

Speaking of awful, Vigil For A Fallen Hero is also going to be awful, though in that map one of the biggest hurdles is keeping your heroes alive. Get healing items and an inn in place pronto, and be generous with reward flags so your heroes can afford to improve their gear. The money more or less comes right back to you anyway.

I seem to recall that this map was mostly a difficult start, but after you got established you were probably going to win. That's all I recall, unfortunately.

Avoid recruiting Rogues or Elves, because you'll be up against another sovereign that WILL place reward flags on your stuff. You don't need your own rogues wrecking your guard towers while you watch helplessly. Feel free to make a Rogue Guild, just don't recruit any rogues.

Be wary of his elves and rogues. A lot of the previous advice on warding them off still applies; you need to keep them off your citizens. Be ready to use spells on your heroes when your heroes clash with his heroes; he uses spells to buff his guys sometimes, but I don't recall ever seeing him trying to burn down one of my heroes with offensive spells.

If you can find the locations where caravans spawn and erect several ballista towers each spawn, the towers should take care of the caravans automatically. I've always won by running him out of gold, but it can take a while.

I seem to recall swarms of shadow beasts being an issue. Don't recruit the slower fragile heroes.

Remember that you only need to keep one bungalow alive. Once the elves make a few in your base, then you can surround them with some towers to help. Focus on securing a local bungalow before worrying about attacking the enemy lairs. You don't want to try to secure a distant bungalow because it will strain your resources.

I read somewhere that this map is actually bugged and crashes before completing. When I saw swarms of shadow beasts (was it swarms of shadow beasts?), I didn't bother to try and finish it.

Wrath of Krolm is interesting. You'll be up against a lot of barbarians, and you'll be on the receiving end of Wrath of Krolm spells. The buffs to enemy heroes are no joke. Make sure you either break multiple altars in a very quick fashion, or take time to recover after each altar is broken.

Don't get too caught up on whether a particular quest is marked as Advanced or Expert. Some of the Experts are easier than a few of the Advanced. :)

That's right! I recall my Priestesses giving dragons a hard time during "Trade Routes." Very peculiar.

Congrats on the new win!

One thing to remember about building a single trading post: if you have a Market-3, then as long as a single trade cart gets to your market, the trading post has both paid for itself and made you a little profit besides. The trading post costs 550-ish, the trade cart carries over 200 gold, so you get at least 600 for a Market-3. If map control is contested periodically, then build a trading post and just let it die when it dies. Rebuild it when you think about it if your peasants aren't swamped with other work.

As of 11:30 AM EST, I did just as the title of the quest, "Slay the Mighty Dragon"!

The key here was to ignore the fairgrounds you start with, get the Solarii exploring after Vendral leaves, and find the other settlements. The other heroes I acquired through such helped immensely, namely the level-30 Rogue, the level-20 Wizard, and the Adept and Warrior I got with their respective buildings, both level 25.

To help reduce the amount of rampaging monsters, I destroyed most of the lairs I found (except for a Dark Castle that I found around the time I found the sword and built a Dwarven Settlement to replicate such). Strangely, Vendral stopped appearing after the second time, but like a ballerina, I kept on my toes in case he DID show up before I was ready.

In the end, I had a Dwarf hero tanking Vendral while his home started taking potshots at the boss and got a 1100-gold bounty on his head. Finally, most of my other heroes joined in an finished off that two-faced bastard.

Dragons: They exist only to be slain. 'Nuff said. ;)