[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

Hi jorko80
First of glad you joined this group in HoMM3 experience.
As for your notations :
- Spirits - you had luck with random upgrading Sleem, with 4 skills, and many more lvls for each (max spirit lvl is 48 now) it hard to get lvlup choices you want/need. best worst thing in this game is randomness and you had good pick this time, and next time you could have horrible lvlup choice item/unit distribution and so on. Only thing i can say is that it changes throughout game.

This is somewhat true - I'll revisit the spirit level ups and if it looks like you can get levelups that are too powerful for your level I can always increase the level requirements. I'll leave it alone for now, but it is certainly something that can be looked at...

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

- I agree in this mod, start is rather easy, even on impossible for those with a bit more experience in KB series. Money never was much of a problem in this game, so higher price of spells is OK.

I think if you're an experienced KB player you won't have any money problems because you don't lose many (if any) troops early in the game and you don't waste your money on stuff that you know isn't worth it.

It's funny, though, I end up whittling my gold down so that when I divorce my wife she gets nothin'!

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

Changing enemy army and bosses early might be fun, but later you`ll have very hard time, because with further location all enemy units get % bonuses for their stats : more hp, more att/def/speed ... And resistances so higher dmg for rage spirits will be welcome in late Hadar, elven/undead lands and demon realm.

There is the fine balance between making it too hard / easy for veteran / new players. If you've done no loss blahbitty-blah challenge this and challenge that then you know a lot of the ins and outs of the game and making it hard for you would make it unduly hard for a new player. So the idea is to bring you along slowly (maybe too slowly if you're experienced), but by the time you get to the mid- and end-game you are fighting battles that are challenging, but ones you've also been trained for by playing the earlier part of the game and noting that it is starting to get harder and harder.

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

For me hardest challenges in this mod are enemy heroes, because Mat made them so they give their units bonuses same as you with skills/items. Expl : enemy hero with highest attribute intellect will have higher magic and cast 2 spells per turn, for 2/4/6 turns in battle depending on hero lvl. Those who have intellect above 30 will cast 3 spells/turn.

Actually I used the hero's level as criteria #1 - see LOGIC.TXT, ehlvldbc in the difficulty_k section and the hero's mana pool as criteria #2 (also in LOGIC.TXT, ehmanadbc). For impossible, heroes >= level 25 get +1 cast and then heroes >= 200 mana get +1 cast. If the hero has both then they get +2 (for a total of 3 casts per round). The 2/4/6 turns are for your mage hero with Higher Magic - enemy heroes get it for the entire combat, but they usually pick the expensive mana spells and can't continue to cast that many because they run their mana pool down.

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

Enemy with highest attack will lower your unit initiative/speed in first 2 turns and give crit% to their units(i`m not sure about this), and high defense hero will give more resistance to his units, or lower you own units. You have time to get to Sonya in elven islands , but she have high intellect, and defense so she lowers you units magic resistance -40% , and cast 3rd lvl lightning spell 2 time/turn with devastating effects to your troops (Mat added bonuses to spells shock effect with working +turns with every 15 intellect , i say working because this didnt apply in original game settings).

Enemy heroes have classes of Warrior, Paladin, and Mage just like you and so what Fatt_Shade is getting at here is that the enemy Warrior and Paladin "skill" bonuses reduce stats of your troops such as initiative and speed, for example. Mage enemy heroes get -resistance to your units with their "Destroyer" skill equivalent since you cannot give enemy heroes mod bonuses (i.e. such as bonuses to fire spells).

If you want to see the exact enemy hero "skill" bonuses I posted exactly what they were here. This shows the exact system that I used for generating the enemy hero "fight" section bonuses based on skills that were from your skill tree, but modified per the restrictions of what could be implemented.

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

(Mat added bonuses to spells shock effect with working +turns with every 15 intellect , i say working because this didnt apply in original game settings).

I thought this was a really important aspect to include because it allowed the spell casting of both you and the enemy heroes to be increased. What is really nice is that you have total control over which spells this affects and which ones it doesn't as specified in SPELLS.TXT. This is an "under-the-hood" improvement that is very subtle, but I think makes the game a lot more enjoyable.

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

So trust me, later in game normal enemy stacks will be just something to try new tactics, but real fights wil be with enemy heroes. All up to dwarf lands are rather easy , but elven/undead/demon land heroes are horrible on impossible difficulty lvl

Yep, just like you get much more powerful with lots of skills so do the enemy heroes and they become very tough during the mid to latter part of the game.

Even early game heroes such as Egirra (the level 7 Ghost with Evil Book) will kick your tail if you're not ready for them (she is in Verlon Forest sometimes, close to the entrance). Not that I've tried really hard, but I haven't beaten her when I've been lower level than her, yet as her Evil Book's (even though they're only level 1) will tear you up!

Of course Fatt_Shade mentioned Sonya, but even Book of Evil @level 23 will give you a very hard time if you're not level 23 yet because it has enhanced Evil Books @level 3 and not to mention level 27 Ambrosius, level 23 Xeona, level 25 Raab Sotten, and level 27 Baal. So get ready for those hero battles!

Also we haven't even mentioned the item suppression fights, which can be very challenging as well since the Tower's spells are based off of the units you use (so for example if you attack with Dragons, then Friendly Towers will cast Dragon Slayer or if you have plants, then Evil Towers will cast fire spells).

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

For bugs, i hope Mat will check what problem is, i didnt encounter that with werewolf hero. Just go through dwarf areas, and you`ll have much more fun after that

I'll see what I can do here - I'm pretty sure that the Werewolf Hero bug I fixed a while back because I think I ran into the same problem that @jorko80 mentioned. I think it was a misspelling of a spell name or something like that, but I'll still double check it to be certain.

Thanks for your comments!

Matt

/C\/C\