Hi all,

I'm running the Etherlords 2 campaign mode and ran into a quest that I don't quite understand in Mission 3 of Kinet campaign.
In the previous mission the character was given a "Blank Artifact" and in this one found another on the corpse of a Synthet (missed it on my first playthrough, accidentally moused over it this time - lo and behold, he was lootable).
Now, throughout the mission I also found two sets of instructions, supposedly on how to turn those blanks into something useful. Problem is, I don't quite know how to get onto that.

One requires to only use summon or non-summon spells, with the extra caveat of forbidding discarding spells other than the spell-specific ones, Curse and Malison. The aim is to have both players have empty hands as long as possible, in particular at the end of combat both hands need to be empty.
The other quest requires the player to only summon halos (not sure if any non-summoning spells are OK), to drain the enemy's ether using their skill as much as possible and finish combat with at least one of each halo, the resulting artifact's power based on the number of halos left in the player's hand at the end of all of it).

Now, the problem is this: are these quests only doable in some particular encounters? I've tried doing the latter when fighting the Chaot champion and despite fulfilling all of the basic requirements, both of my blanks remained thus.

Did I miss anything?

Also, if I'm not mistaken, the first quest is unreasonably hard due to Kinet reliance on HA+Flood/CA to get anything done. It would suggest going down the non-summoning route, but the only way to actually win a fight then would be to wait for ether disturbance to kill the enemy hero. Any tips on doing that?

And before you ask, I'm well aware that the mission is doable without them. I'm just a completionist freak who can't live with himself if he won't get his hands on some loot that the game vaguely suggests getting :D