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| Thread: Meranduul's Quest - A unique map that will test your logic and game knowledge | |
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keldorn
Promising
Known Hero
that casts green flames
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posted January 12, 2020 11:26 PM |
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Meranduul's Quest - A unique map that will test your logic and game knowledge
Hello everyone!
Quite some time ago, I was working on a project to create a challenge map, the likes of which had never been seen before. The basic idea was to create a map that will test your Heroes 3 knowledge, how well and deeply you understand the game, as well as your problem solving skills. To my best understanding, no such map is available currently and I think nobody has done anything like this before (but I could be wrong ofc  ). I decided however to open a new thread for it, because last time I posted it, it still contained only 5 quests, and even those 5 have been changed dramatically, so the suggestions and ideas that people wrote there are no longer valid. So I thought let's start over. Below you'll find everything you need to know about the map.
1. Basic Rules of the Map
- This map contains 10 challenges that will test your logic and adoption skills, as well as your HoMM3 knowledge. To win it, you must complete all challenges within 7 months, and not lose your starting hero, Meranduul. Further instructions will always be given to you, once you start the map.
- The map only uses default Shadow of Death items, so no HotA, no scripts, no codes, no tricks, no specially designed map decorations, just the vanilla map editor was used. Therefore, the map is compatible with any version of the game.
- At the start of the map, please select impossible difficulty and gold as your bonus. The map has a lot of text messages, I suggest you read them all for an all-round experience.
- The design of the map, I admit, is quite poor. Not exactly pleasing to the eye, no pretty patterns, no nicely placed map items. In some places it's a mess really, and I'm looking forward to any help if someone would like to make improvements on the design, it would be more than welcome.
- Loading the autosave at any point in time is strongly unadvised. Instead, you can save the game after completing a challenge, and load that point if you fail somewhere. This is because the autosave gives you an unfair advantage in some places, so too many savings and loadings will ruin your fun and your full experience of the map.
- I would greatly appreciate if you count up the number of fails and challenge reloads that you have to do. That way, I get a picture about which are the most difficult (or least difficult) parts of the map, which will allow me to make adjustments afterwards. So, count your deaths please 
2. Known problems
- Unfortunately, your hero will be levelling up throughout the challenges. This is bad, because some challenges were designed for one spell power and one knowledge only. If your hero levels up and gets a knowledge skill, please still use only a maximum of 10 mana at a time! If your hero gets a spell power, that's most unfortunate, because it will make a few tasks a lot easier than I wanted. In an ideal world, I'd like your hero to get only attack or defense skills at levelups, but I don't know how to programme or script this into the basic map editor (you see, I'm no IT guy... not even ERM in WoG  )
- The difficulty of the 10th challenge is highly unknown to me. For some of you, it could be super easy, or a pain in the neck. I'd love to hear any feedback about it, I couldn't decide on my own.
- If you find any other problems, or you have any comments, suggestions, improvements, corrections, or anything, I'd love to hear them. Any feedback is greatly appreciated and it helps a lot.
3. Downloading and installing
You can download the map from this link.
This is just a regular H3M file. To play it, just place the file inside your Maps directory.
Thank you for your attention, and for trying the map. I'm looking forward to your insights Best wishes!
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Rakso
Adventuring Hero
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posted January 13, 2020 02:02 PM |
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Quote:
- Unfortunately, your hero will be levelling up throughout the challenges. This is bad, because some challenges were designed for one spell power and one knowledge only. If your hero levels up and gets a knowledge skill, please still use only a maximum of 10 mana at a time! If your hero gets a spell power, that's most unfortunate, because it will make a few tasks a lot easier than I wanted. In an ideal world, I'd like your hero to get only attack or defense skills at levelups, but I don't know how to programme or script this into the basic map editor (you see, I'm no IT guy... not even ERM in WoG
You can limit the hero level to 1 in the map properties, where the map title and description is. You can reward the hero directly in the map with primary skills of attack and defense if you need those.
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keldorn
Promising
Known Hero
that casts green flames
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posted January 13, 2020 02:26 PM |
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Oh sure, how silly of me. Why didn't I think of that? Thanks!
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zmudziak22
Supreme Hero
Heroes 3 Fan
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posted January 13, 2020 02:41 PM |
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Also you can set secondary skills using events or pandora boxes, even spells and so on.
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Barbuta
Adventuring Hero
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posted January 18, 2020 02:38 AM |
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Not a great map
keldorn said:
The basic idea was to create a map that will test your Heroes 3 knowledge, how well and deeply you understand the game, as well as your problem solving skills. To my best understanding, no such map is available currently and I think nobody has done anything like this before
Well I played the map and the first 2 "challenges" were mazes. No heroes 3 knowledge involved. No understanding of heroes 3 game mechanics involved. No problem solving skills involved. Just pure luck going in the right direction if you don't use the map editor. I'm sorry but this is a really bad map. If 2 of 10 (20%) of your challenges are mazes with nothing in them I can't call this map good. Other people have done mazes in their maps but not as 1/5 of their maps. Needless to say I didn't finish it.
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keldorn
Promising
Known Hero
that casts green flames
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posted January 18, 2020 10:51 PM |
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Well, I'm sorry you had a bad experience. You're right, the first two challenges were mazes, but I would have to respectfully disagree with the luck factor. Luck has nothing to do with any of the challenges, there are ways to figure out the correct path to take. And that's where the game knowledge and problem solving comes in. If you guessed your way through the challenges, I must say I'm almost certain you haven't understood a key point involved with that challenge. Every challenge is designed to be possible without random guessing, you just need to figure out the correct way to do it, and in some places, it requires game knowledge. I would much rather not give any solutions here, because that would be spoiler to other readers, but if you want, send me a message via HCM and we can discuss the solutions that way. Oh BTW, the third challenge would have been much more about game knowledge, if I may suggest you to reload and give it one more chance
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted January 18, 2020 11:07 PM |
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keldorn said:
To my best understanding, no such map is available currently and I think nobody has done anything like this before
Well, all good maps test your heroes knowledge, the difference being that their authors were less lazy and actually spent time to also deliver a nice design, a story and a well tested progression
Also, check this Rosekavalier map
Or this one
Players are not very attracted to the analytic aspect only, they want to have fun through all their senses, that's why the design must also follow. I know, it means a lot of additional work, but the reward is priceless when you succeed.
The thing with vanilla mazes is that the explored part remains visible, so all you have to do is move around as long as you can, then click far away on the already visible map to find your way. A maze is interesting only when the shroud of war is automatically covering all the explored parts, then combined with visual hints. Possible with wog, not with vanilla, which explains the microscopic number of mazes until now (tew2, to kill for power?).
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Era II mods and utilities
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Barbuta
Adventuring Hero
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posted January 20, 2020 01:05 AM |
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Edited by Barbuta at 01:18, 20 Jan 2020.
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keldorn said:
Well, I'm sorry you had a bad experience. You're right, the first two challenges were mazes, but I would have to respectfully disagree with the luck factor. Luck has nothing to do with any of the challenges, there are ways to figure out the correct path to take. And that's where the game knowledge and problem solving comes in. If you guessed your way through the challenges, I must say I'm almost certain you haven't understood a key point involved with that challenge. Every challenge is designed to be possible without random guessing, you just need to figure out the correct way to do it, and in some places, it requires game knowledge. I would much rather not give any solutions here, because that would be spoiler to other readers, but if you want, send me a message via HCM and we can discuss the solutions that way. Oh BTW, the third challenge would have been much more about game knowledge, if I may suggest you to reload and give it one more chance
I did come back and I did finish the map and holy **** you really love your mazes! It's not just the first 2 challenges that are mazes but 5 (1, 2, 4, 5, 7)! 5 of them! So half of the map is mazes!
Two more were questions about the game and various battle situations. Those were mostly fine but the first question could be bypassed using view earth while you still have the book. 1 question was wrong and 1 question had the answers mixed up which is just sloppy. Also you say that you can read the question again if you trigger the event again but the one time I tried that it didn't work - so not all events are set correctly.
The last challenge was simply annoying and I used the map editor to finish it faster.
The other 2 challenges were decent.
Also in the beginning you said I had 3 months to finish the map yet I did it in 4 and a half and nothing prevented me from winning. Why is the map XL+U which is mostly empty when you could have fitted everything in a M+U map. I guess you have to have big mazes everywhere.
In conclusion I would recommend it to any one who likes god damn mazes. But if you don't it's not a good map mainly because it seem very unfinished.
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