So, I got this quest from the temple of light to destroy the gate of chaos, for some reason it sounds like it would have a story effect, should I delay my victory to comb through the shard for it and destroy it? What kind of reward are we looking at here.

Also, while we are at it. I have noticed that you can get additional building schematics are rewards for winning a shard if you find them in quests. this suggests that it is advantageous to grind up a shard and fully explore it for the loot early on to more quickly unlock buildings and tech. (although such a prospect is dauntingly tedious. Thoughts?

About gates: plot-unrelated quest. Reward is one of (1300 gold, Hero's medallion, Chestpiece of Valor)

Schematics: http://www.gog.com/forum/eador_series/campaign_game_duration_and_feedback/post9

To expand on the first question a bit none of the Temple of Light or Store quests effect the plot line of the campaign. Actually that includes ALL quests you can get including Race and Crystal as well. It may though influence your Good/Evil Alignment as certain quests like the Race alliances want you todo certain actions that may slant you in an evil direction or give you evil units.

Figure I may as well post this here for others to use if they want. I usually list the one I take first if I don't just take the gold. If I get them later in the game I usually take the gold.


Temple of Light Quests & Rewards

Kill 15 Skeletons - Paladin Boots, Protector Sword or 450 Gold.
Kill 15 Zombies - Veterans Armor, Accurate Crossbow (8/5/4 Armor Piercing & Precise Shot 2) or Gold.
Kill 15 Imps - Paladin Gloves, Druids Belt or 500 Gold.
Kill 7 Ghouls - Paladin Cloak, Veterans Cloak or 600 Gold.
Kill 7 Hellhounds - ?
Kill 7 Fiends - Spear of Retribution (First Strike, Atk 3/6, Hex3 and Stam +2), Shining Bracelet (Resist +1 Wrist) or Gold.
Kill 4 Ghosts - Helmet of Valor, Sphere of Wisdom or 1000 Gold.
Kill 4 Demons - Chestpiece of Valor, Heroes Medal or 1000 Gold.
Kill 2 Devils - Banner of Victory (Atk +5/3, [Party HP +3, Stamina +4 and Morale +5]), Saphire Ring (Morale +3, Resist +1)or 1500 Gold.
Kill 2 Vampires - Ruby Ring (HP +4, Stamina +2), Helmet of Intrepidy (HP +10, Morale +6) or 1500 Gold.

Destroy Gate of CHAOS - Astral Boots (HP+4, Gems +5) or Sword of Justice (1H 5/5 Smite Evil & Parry), 1300 Gold
Destroy Gate of DEATH - ?

Thank you, I boxed in the AI and have spent 5 hours searching and I am still only 30% done (and this is a small shard) and still haven't found the damnable chaos gate. I have three saves, all done by reloading shard number 6 halfway through and then finishing conquering it. Awarding me different rewards (the first master jeweler, the second journeyman tailor, and the third master enchanter)
I am preparing the saves for an upload

You can find a Gate of Chaos in a province that was a Chaos Ruled one originally OR one that was taken over by chaos creatures.

The same goes for Gate of Death, it's found in a previously Undead Province or one that was taken over by the undead.

Also it should be noted that not all gates are at the same strength. You could have 2 different Gates of Chaos and one could be tougher. For example I ounce ran into one that had 4 Devils in it!!! and then one that had nothing stronger than a Demon or two.

Edit: Should also put in here that my info is in regards to Genesis. I don't play Masters so don't know how much carried over but probably a lot.

1. Gates always created in the province "Chaos lands". If you captured one, search in it. Another variant - go to negative karma, let devil open the gate.
2. Are you speaking about broken masters?

Neither exists in this shard, there is one single deathland which i scoured completely 100% searched (and cleared everything but the shops from it in an attempt to restore it, no dice)
There isn't a single chaos ruled or chaos attacked or chaos anything anywhere in the shard... unless maybe its on the enemy capital but I doubt it Yes. MOTBW not Gensis
Incidentally, I can't take a screenshot in it, and even though i enabled desktop capture mode in nvidia shadowplay it can't be started while the game is in focus (very odd... maybe it intercepts by alt button press?)

Sorry to say then Masters messed things up again and I cannot give any more advice on it.

I only bought Masters for like 3 bucks and refused to ever pay more and I still haven't even played it although I do play Genesis regularly.

It is a lot better now, but yea still buggy and UI is still worse than genesis.
It crashes occasionally, but then I just load an autosave, which are a very welcome improvement over genesis.
The big advantage I think is that the campaign is shorter with fewer grind stretches where its "now conquer 5 shards for the next campaign thing to occur".

on further testing, it is not related to quests completed.
What happens is that when I win a shard I get the promised rewards +2 extra random tech. The extra random tech appears to change every turn. That is, if I reload turn 164, end turn, assault enemy castle and win, I will get the same 2 extra rewards every time (in this test example, master enchanter and pathfinder guild, tested 4 times). But if I load tuirn 164, skip one turn (continue the siege instead of immediate assault on castle), then win on turn 165 then the two extra wards change (in that specific case it was master plate armorer and something else, tested twice)
Reloading the prior save, I was attacking a shard called lisgat that said it will provide me the knowledge of temple of life, journeymen mailsmith, journeyman weaponsmith, enchanted grove.
Those 4 promised buiildings showed up every single time. only thing that changed was the 2 "random" extras which were NOT listed when I chose to attack the shard. Furthermore, waiting an extra 100 turns to win to grind out a bunch of other tech didn't seem to do anything...
Experimenting I so far managed to get 5 different sets of "2 free random extras" to go with the 4 promised rewards.

... Testing it, I get +2 random building techs whether I win with an early save where I had only discovered 2 of the 4 techs promised in that shard (enchanted grove and journeymen mailmaker)
Or if I spend 100 turns grinding to find the temple of life as well (not sure if I managed to find the journeyman weaponsmith because i had locked out my ability to build that one by choosing different buildings for my 4 t1 producers)

I am also not sure if the random extra quantity depends on the shard size and number of promised rewards. Regardless, grinding from 2/4 found to 3/4 found maybe 4/4 found did not increase the number of my random extras

I think that due to fancy 3d effects real life time needed to advance can be worse - battles take much longer time.
IIRC, I completed 2 campaigns in Genesis with 26 shards conquered, I'm not sure that it is possible to radically decrease this amount. 20? Ok. 15? Too small, imo.

You can set combat speed to max where a lot (but not all) animations are skipped and stuff in combat happen instantly.

Its possible to "rush" genesis like that, but that doesn't mean its normal. I did 20 shards and I was at "got 1 key of truth, decided not to pursue keys of truth victory, had no idea how to even start pursuing the other victories (and according to guides I would need a LOT of turns to get there)". Also, from shard 15 to 19 it was just "nobody has anything to say to me, nothing happens, I am just grinding shards without advancing the story". A few shards of grinding was ok in the beginning (and that still remains) but at some point you need to actually get plot advancement with your shard completion