I'm seeing a bothersome trend at the start of Etherlords 1 missions. In the second Chaot mission, an enemy hero quickly rises to level 6 and destroys any of my heroes in his way in the second week. At top speed I can reach him at level 4 with cantrips, and his level 5 hero has almost all rare spells with runes already gained. With positions swapped, I'd win this scenario before week 4 started. Am I missing something about the easiest difficulty level?

My first time through I got lucky, and happened to kill him - but I haven't found a way to restart a mission. So I figured why not run through that level again, since most of it was so easy. But I have my choice of losing with a level 3 hero fully stocked with new spells, or a level 4 hero with only cantrips. Looks like I need to hit the foe with sacrificial level 1 heroes to use up his runes - but on easy difficulty?

Mission 3 is more of the same. I start really liking this combination of "Duel of the Plainswalkers" and "Heroes of Might and Magic." I didn't expect the combination, and loved it when things worked well and the game had variety. But the start of mission 3 has my castle get hit by another level 6 hero when I lack any experience. And here he wins every time without any hope for my creatures to retaliate - now with flood, and no flying creatures, there's no creature I can use against him. After my castle got beaten down to 14 health I figured longer and longer ways of stalling him, finally coming up with a clever way that won me a battle. But again, a very punishing route for easy difficulty. And I restarted the entire campaign because I wanted to make different choices for the level.

I think I replayed level 2 thinking it was fun the first time, and I'd rather replay a fun level than deal with a bad one. Now each level seems to feature the computer cheating it's way to an advantage, and I have to deal with it each time I begin a new mission. Am I on the wrong track?

I think mission 3 is where I stopped. If it was the one where he starts doing those astral battles against you right away with an overpowered hero and uses Lamias (if I remember?). That was ridiculous. The odds are so badly stacked against you and frustrating that you agonize over every wasted step.

The good news? EL2 does away with *all* that. Enemies don't move (there are a couple missions with super-easy time limits but in general you can just trundle around at your leisure), castles/astral battles are gone completely, the balancing is great, runes are gone, and the enemies are always around your level.

I've stubbornly gone back to that mission and have reached a steady state. The key feature of the mission is an opponent who uses a "flood"/"Lamia"/"gibberling" deck. When the player taps a creature to use an ability or to attack - they can never get back up. Meanwhile the computer player, a flood specialist, sometimes has his creatures get up automatically. The computer also casts "spirit of war" so creatures get up, and don't rest when attacking.

My first trick was ethereal attacks designed to lose. I won't win, but the computer has to burn up runes. I can't see the computer's runes, but I got what I wanted - fewer ethereal attacks by a hero I couldn't beat.

Second trick was walls. I still lose every combat, but now it takes longer. Instead of finishing me with 3 Lamias, the computer needs to summon 7 or 8 Lamias. I can't prove it, but it seemed to deplete runes. His attacks happened less frequently. With a few creatures and "Anger" I could even kill off Lamias he sent on foolish attacks.

Finally, I won a combat. Creatures can't finish him off, so I formed a deck with no attacking creatures - customized for the repeated combat. It had several earthquakes, walls, burning graves, and used a rare spell that gives both players 2 ether sources. As the computer tries to deploy an army, I try and reach 9 mana. With 9 mana I create a 7 point earthquake that kills all of his creatures except one type. And with 8 damage I kill that Lamia, too. Once the computer has lost 7 creatures, I cast "burning graves" twice and deal him 14 points of damage each - and he dies.

So now I have 2 ethereal attackers that trade off, and 1 ethereal defender. All use the same creature killing deck, and with the energy boost they tend to win most of the time. The wrong combination plus too few health can still result in a loss, but it's very rare to lose twice. And with attacking him so often, he rarely has runes for multiple attacks on me.

I should have switched to Etherlords 2 long ago, but for now I'm trying to overcome the mission that was so painful the first time around. Overall I'd say to avoid it - it's not worth it, but given how far I've gotten I'd like to vanquish that mission.

What a poor experience - after a grinding level, the next one is worse. I spotted a level 6 hero on turn 7. His level 5 and 6 heroes ripped through my low level heroes with ease. My castle died on week 3 day 1 as I managed to defeat the level 6 hero... only to have my castle also attacked by a new opponent at level 7. Level design was a joke for Etherlords 1.

Tried my best to get trough some levels of E1, but finally ragequit, when I was close to beating the opponents toughest champion after a billion tries and then died to that overtime-lightning. Oh well, playing E2 for now. Might come back to 1 someday and try it again. I do like a fair challenge, but here it just doesn't feel fair.

level 4. this is what I am playing now. this is the first time I had to scrap the entire mission and start over from the start of it because there just isn't any way to get the deck fixed in time now with the resources that I had. maybe if I wiped all my heroes but one, cast shield. then maybe. but still not that likely. yeah this is the first mission where I really felt like level design was just completely messed without any exception of any sort.

though to be fair (be fair to etherlords mirite) I did stack things against my heroes for this one pretty bad because I recruited an extra hero or more like I always do, when instead you need that extra ether for luck and shield castle magic. still, there's no way of knowing all that and it just runs you into a wall, once again. I expected the astral attack because I read on the forum a thread about a level in the chaot campaign where they attack your base early, might have been this one even, and also because you start with the astral spells. I didn't, however, take note of the luck spell. you need the ether for those spells. another problem is I'm mainly focused towards the Kinets and I made my deck really creature based and I thought this might be a problem, and sure enough. but still, shouldn't have been that much of a big deal. the deck you need this time is particularly odd because, again, you have no spell removal. you do in the second game, though. it shows how they started to fix things up. one of the creatures you get early is almost useless, there isn't a deck where you'd want it at least not from I can tell early on in the mission, but that creature would be exactly what you need against the astral hero in that mission if this were the second game deck. keep forgetting you don't lose heroes on ether combat. interesting. yeah that's the mission right here unless they have other heroes or something. but then, that was probably the point of it, you're supposed to do something like this. this is another reason they probably give you the shield spell. still gonna try to beat him with the deck.

yeah man you were not kidding. on my second try I managed to get rid of both heroes with my gimpy level 3 hero with the starter deck and the artifact. so now I figure I should push them. but damn.

level 6 hero on day 7 followed by level 5 hero one turn later. what happened to you after that though? didn't they destroy your castle? how did you last until turn 15?

well I beat that mission. beat the heroes several days ago.

in my case I used immobilize, suffocating gas, and the mechos on the vital hero, who was level 8 in my case. the suffocating gas and mechos worked well together, and the immobilize kept his mantis creature from shutting down my creatures too much. it was pretty close, and I had to use level 1s as blockers to block the other level 5 which would have killed my castle anyway, but it worked.

as for the level 6 and 5 heroes on day 7 and 8. I used the starter deck, and had two on luck and one in artificer. not sure if it's better another way, but you do need the artifact for the second fight.

now I'm on the level where you don't have a castle. this level was the most natural, and most fun I'd had from the good campaign so I'm hoping it's a bit better.

well I beat the campaign. the level after the rush level was better as expected, just like it was the first time. it was pretty fun start to finish. I made a good decision on hero matchups once and a not so good decision once but it was alright. you have to be careful though because they really don't give you many resources this time. you have enough to replace 2 decks and top up one or two guys. the mission after that one wasn't bad either. I suspected it might be better given how insane level 5 was. when they didn't all rush my castle on day 6 or even less , I thought it might be alright. and I gotta say I had a lot of fun on that mission, I steamrolled everyone. unusual. I had the whole thing locked up by the middle forties turns and all enemy castles were destroyed by 49. only one moment of frustration early on when a level 1 from an enemy attacked one of my level 1s. and then another later because I took on one of the stronger monsters with a deck that wasn't strong against it and I spent some tries trying to figure out how to get it work against the monster without changing the whole deck. (orc deck. in the end I put four rain of stones in) I absolutely destroyed the bosses this time, wasn't expecting that either. the chaot's just have cards and minions that are good for it. normally I'd probably go back and try and beat the game with the last two races to play the guys I didn't get to but I don't think I'll bother there. it was a nice little run there at the end of the campaign for sure.

Glad to find this thread, i was wondering what i was doing wrong in Etherlords1 now i understand that the game is just stupid, there is no difficulty level easy enough to make this viable - uninstall time