I was just curious to hear how some other people beat this scenario, from the Shadow of Death expansion for HOMM3. You have to beat a swarm of ancient behemoths, within five months.

It's a tough map, given the limited timeline. Something to do is quickly dispatch multiple heroes on boats to explore the waters and grab up as many floating chests and driftwood as possible. Also watch out for shipwreck survivors - I once got the Angel Wings from one survivor, which made the map waaay easier!

Try to eliminate your neighbour quickly, so you can have the island to yourself. At that point, there are only two castles that need any real protection, near the landing points. There's a large area to the southwest that is rich with gems and powerups, and another castle. A decent sized army will be needed to clear this area, but you will be producing gold and troops at a good rate.

For magic skills, try for Wisdom, Earth, and Air Magic. For spells, hope to get Water Walk / Fly / Dimension Door / Town Portal. The Navigation skill wouldn't hurt either.

There are several relic-level artifacts around the map, usually near the coloured tents. The artifacts aren't required, though are helpful. All the coloured tents must be visited to access the end of the map.

It's hard to give any specific advice, as it's a very open map and there is no one way to do it. I've beaten it a few times, and failed it much more than that. Good luck!

Thanks for the reply. I decided to use the map editor to give me more time to finish the scenario. I have never seen one with such large computer armies, besides the behemoths themselves.

I've had to do the same before out of frustration. It's a really short default timeline for the map size. It is possible, I've done it. But I've also just saved myself the hurry by extending the required time.

Though one can't help but wonder why a shipwreck survivor was struggling against the waves if he had the Angel Wings and could just fly away ;)

Final battle was way too easy with these stats and army. Played on 200% think i would have got it through in 3,5 months when i got town portal and fly spell.First time i played this map like 20 years ago. This was the first time i cleared it.

My tactic was to conquer starting island first and gather troops. Flag every mine u can and build at least two portal of glorys as fast as possible. After two months i moved to the ocean and bought the water cartographer. Then i captured all the Rampart towns and build mage guilds to get dimension door and fly. Treasuries helps a lot in rampart, try to gather money as much as you can.

It's been a year, but I was playing it on Impossible difficulty and won it or lost it narrowly, I can't remember, but the Grail was reachable on day 1 of the mission, and I always keep a starting save just against that remote possibility. So, naturally, I had to reload it and play it with the Grail in my possession on day two. I think I played through it several times that way. It presented some difficulties, nonetheless. Even with the Grail, you still have to count on dealing with all the Behemoths, so it wasn't an easy game, regardless. One also still needed to get all the tents in order to bypass all the gates at the end.

I found a workaround. First, I had to log my previous save and max out all the mage guilds to find out where Town Portal, Dimension Door, and Fly were. Then, I started over, capturing the two Castle towns to the south and building them up as fast as I could, which wasn't that quickly. Then I had to capture the towns that had the spells I wanted. Boating took a full week, I'm guessing, as I had to sail all way east, and then north. I was able to land on a tiny spot north of the Behemoths, and then I could fly across the ocean and bypass all the gates, landing directly on the Behemoths. I think it took me something like two months even with the Grail, but it was a quick win. Unfortunately, I had to switch HOMM3 to a new computer and lost my high scores and the starting save, too, or I'd upload it for everyone.

EDIT: I'm now questioning my memory of whether I actually played it on Impossible. I seem to recall, I initially tried that and failed, so maybe I bumped it down when I found the grail save.