SpellForce: Conquest of Eo - strategy RPG from Fantasy General 2 devs - Weaver's Realms expansion coming September 30th

[ArchAngel]

I was too conservative this run, you probably need to move around the map way more to go for other win conditions. So far my scouting was only done by lone Wisps or Jelly trying to find academies and unguarded money/mana.

Also I find it irritating how impossible it is to get T3 Beasts. Alchemist starts as Nature mage but very soon you are forced to stop being that. Best I could get is a T3 Drake summon that is a Fantastical creature that I cannot heal or buff during battles and he gets no XP. And that spell costs 75 mana and 4 upkeep..

 

[ArchAngel]

I finally zerged one of the circle mages and took out his capital. Now all his holdings became Circle Magi factions and I still need to take them all out..
I moved my Tower near his main one so to give my auras to my armies (+20% death res, and for them -50% white res and -50% elemental res). I also made the building for one extra unit in stack and upgrade for that building that gives all my troops +2 range (OP LOL). Then I softened enemy army with a few stacks of free jelly creature and firebugs (one does white and other elemental damage) and finished them off with my undead killing hero/stack.
Now I need to take my tower further north to take out Dark Elf magi that also uses only undead units (because elf and dark elf units are not in base game, well except for Elf Rangers) before he moves from Cold War into full war and spawns even more free stacks of units.

Also apparently you can craft a Bag of Eagle Spirit flasks that gives you unlimited amount of those, I need to find out the recipe for it. Google does not help.

It's 9 orange 3 green. I've been using them on most my heroes.

I randomly managed to find a recipe for Keg of Beer or something like that :D But I didn't make it because it would have cost some of my best components. I just wish recipe would write into the list just if you manage to get it as preview and not only once you build one.

 

[Parabalus]

I was too conservative this run, you probably need to move around the map way more to go for other win conditions. So far my scouting was only done by lone Wisps or Jelly trying to find academies and unguarded money/mana

I myself didn't really do any scouting, just use heroes+apprentice stacks to clear the map, likely won't cut it on higher difficulties.

I finished on W18 with the cities revered, spells + landmarks objectives.

Landmark is very easy with Instant Castle from Earthmaster, wonder how you would do that one without it.

 

[ArchAngel]

I was too conservative this run, you probably need to move around the map way more to go for other win conditions. So far my scouting was only done by lone Wisps or Jelly trying to find academies and unguarded money/mana

I myself didn't really do any scouting, just use heroes+apprentice stacks to clear the map, likely won't cut it on higher difficulties.

I finished on W18 with the cities revered, spells + landmarks objectives.

Landmark is very easy with Instant Castle from Earthmaster, wonder how you would do that one without it.

You need 5, I guess once you got 4 apprentice you can get 4+1 but you need to do that as last of the 3 goals.
I didn't roam a lot because I spent a lot of time defending my tower and other heroes main goal was to find new resource groups where I can setup Lodges. Then also random creatures appear and attack that Lodge so someone needs to be close enough to defend.. Only now in week 30+ when I got 4 apprentice + hero I feel like I can afford to have 1-2 heroes move a bit more away but again I do it because all my resources get drained too fast. I am always in negative with money (and that is with all hero stacks having at least one Bear which is free; and some still use high level FireBugs which btw at lvl 15 can get perk that gives them +10 damage which is crazy and I got one such in my Undead killing team and I gave it Eagle Spirit and it was murdering enemy Liches from other side of the battlefield :D).

 

[Parabalus]

Also I find it irritating how impossible it is to get T3 Beasts. Alchemist starts as Nature mage but very soon you are forced to stop being that. Best I could get is a T3 Drake summon that is a Fantastical creature that I cannot heal or buff during battles and he gets no XP. And that spell costs 75 mana and 4 upkeep..

You can buy them from the slaver city in the South-East, or enslave->follower them yourself.

There's also a shop building which I didn't test, and a shop refill spell to speed things up.

 

[ArchAngel]

Also I find it irritating how impossible it is to get T3 Beasts. Alchemist starts as Nature mage but very soon you are forced to stop being that. Best I could get is a T3 Drake summon that is a Fantastical creature that I cannot heal or buff during battles and he gets no XP. And that spell costs 75 mana and 4 upkeep..

You can buy them from the slaver city in the South-East, or enslave->follower them yourself.

There's also a shop building which I didn't test, and a shop refill spell to speed things up.

South East is Human town (well more East) and South of that is water and only a few islands. And I didn't run into any T3 beasts to enslave. Also Enslave reduces their stats, I do not want that.
They let me build Kennels in my tower but do not let me upgrade them to get some T3 beasts, best I could get is T2 mountain Bears.
But game lets you make upgrade to Barracks to get T3 Paladins.
Paladins are cool but they do not have Command ability of Knights which lets Knights give my Eagle Spirit buffed archer 3 more actions for attacking :D

 

[Parabalus]

Also I find it irritating how impossible it is to get T3 Beasts. Alchemist starts as Nature mage but very soon you are forced to stop being that. Best I could get is a T3 Drake summon that is a Fantastical creature that I cannot heal or buff during battles and he gets no XP. And that spell costs 75 mana and 4 upkeep..

You can buy them from the slaver city in the South-East, or enslave->follower them yourself.

There's also a shop building which I didn't test, and a shop refill spell to speed things up.

South East is Human town (well more East) and South of that is water and only a few islands. And I didn't run into any T3 beasts to enslave. Also Enslave reduces their stats, I do not want that.
They let me build Kennels in my tower but do not let me upgrade them to get some T3 beasts, best I could get is T2 mountain Bears.
But game lets you make upgrade to Barracks to get T3 Paladins.

You can cast Follower on Enslaved units to remove it.

You have the town sieged by orcs in the East, but south of that, and S-West of the medusa islands is a beasthunting town which sells exclusively enslaved beasts.

I got the paladin barracks upgrade early (W7 I think) and it won the game for me, made it easy to clear the demon wastes.

 

[ArchAngel]

Also I find it irritating how impossible it is to get T3 Beasts. Alchemist starts as Nature mage but very soon you are forced to stop being that. Best I could get is a T3 Drake summon that is a Fantastical creature that I cannot heal or buff during battles and he gets no XP. And that spell costs 75 mana and 4 upkeep..

You can buy them from the slaver city in the South-East, or enslave->follower them yourself.

There's also a shop building which I didn't test, and a shop refill spell to speed things up.

South East is Human town (well more East) and South of that is water and only a few islands. And I didn't run into any T3 beasts to enslave. Also Enslave reduces their stats, I do not want that.
They let me build Kennels in my tower but do not let me upgrade them to get some T3 beasts, best I could get is T2 mountain Bears.
But game lets you make upgrade to Barracks to get T3 Paladins.

You can cast Follower on Enslaved units to remove it.

You have the town sieged by orcs in the East, but south of that, and S-West of the medusa islands is a beasthunting town which sells exclusively enslaved beasts.

I got the paladin barracks upgrade early (W7 I think) and it won the game for me, made it easy to clear the demon wastes.

Yea I don't have that spell Follower :D
I only got 3 nature pages, 2 death now (1 from event, 1 from killing Undead circle mage), 1 Elemental, 1 Light (not sure the name but lets me cast Holy weapon on troops) and one more (not sure if Mentalist or something from Dwarves; not at home to check). Since I decided to take on Circle mages my Tower is stuck for a long time near their lands and I could not move it to take over more Allfire or Shaper Secret area. And now it will be going North and North East so hopefully I get more spells that way.

 

[Lacrymas]

First patch hit -
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1581770/announcements/detail/3671032690248800620

Spoiler

Esteemed mages,

our game has been out for a week now and we couldn’t be happier with your reactions and feedback. We have been listening and reading as much as we can and we immediately got to work on improving the game and fixing any bugs you have encountered. The current patch contains over 60 fixes, improvements and additions to the game!

We will of course continue to further improve the game and your feedback and support in this is invaluable. Thanks for helping us make the game better!

Today’s patch will address some of the main topics and the two major bugs that hindered people from enjoying the game fully.

Some balancing changes and improvements will only work if you start a new game, especially for Antagonist behaviours, quests and starting locations.

• Fixed game crashing when it could not save to the hard drive due to Windows Defender or antivirus preventing that. (You will still need to manually add the game as an exception and allow it to create and write into folders)
• Fixed an issue where autosave would be triggered between an adventure and starting a battle inside of it causing incorrect behavior after loading that autosave.
• Added Quick save and Quick Load (F5/F8)
• Primary school now determines first apprentice's followers to add more variety to early game troops and decrease initial difficulty.
• New Hiring Locations were added for Start Regions to increase variety of initial units available.
• Antagonists do not spawn stacks close to your tower when going to war now, to prevent curb-stomping your tower out of nowhere. This should make the mid-game smoother and provide less of a difficulty spike.
• Antagonists also announce they are about to take actions against player via notifications.
• We tweaked Antagonist reputation loss (lose more when you bring the fight to them, less anywhere else) + Antagonist AI can send Titans now! That should keep end-game difficulty more even.

There were a bunch of further balancing and quality of life improvements, some nerfs and a few fixes that affect gameplay and balancing as well, so here is a lit of all the changes:

Additions

• Implemented Quicksave (F5) and Quickload (F8) on world map (1 quicksave slot for now and quickload only loads quicksaves not any other) & don't allow to save over quicksaves
• Primary school now determines first apprentice's followers to add more variety to early game troops
• New Hiring Locations for Start Regions to increase variety of initial units available.
• Added floating text when a unit resists a status effect attempt through their working resistance.
• Dead Hero + Active Spells first time screens added

Improvements

• Antagonists do not spawn stacks close to your tower when going to war now, to prevent curb-stomping your tower out of nowhere. Antagonists also announce actions against player via notifications.
• Tweaked Antagonist reputation loss (lose more when you bring the fight to them, less anywhere else) + Antagonist AI can send Titans now!
• [Alchemy] made Toxic Distillate and Plague Vessel more different from each other
• Now displays floating text when a unit resists a status effect attempt through their working resistance.
• Skills display when they END the turn instead of when they don't
• Added icon indicating the rewards when a new tower level is unlocked next to the floors
• Implemented error popup in case something is blocking access to the save game directory
• Created more specialized overlays for locations and plants to make them more lightweight
• Tweaked Summon Beast to have more variety
• Tweaked some worldmap hints for location spawning
• Cleanse Ally skill works on everyone (so you can cleanse mind controlled units)
• Charmed Status effect (Mind Control) now tagged as negative status effect -> cleansable on own units
• [Souls] Pristine souls are not ingredients (no essences)
• Word of Recall can be revealed sooner in spell book when owning the page
• Extra hiring-slot now shows different icon in location overlay ( hammers instead of unit+)
• Select tower/airship first when during flight to prevent accidentally moving units out
• Improved performance while in the tower menu or while viewing unit details
• Mitigation for everybody affected by the autosave + battle on turn start issue. We now explain what the problem is (needs windows defender allowing folder access).
• Improved Water Material in Region Alluvyan
• Changed Rohen horizontal faction banner color to Orange.
• Removed the story path where Castle Meldec would vanish

Balancing

• Adamantinum increased to 2 all-color essences
• Nerfed wisps
• Fixed coloring/image in Tower menu (Allfire flow had wrong color)
• Room extensions balancing (Illithian Chamber bonus increased to 2, Employee of the Month more expensive)
• Tweaked Necromancy starting items (from hamlet) for easier first crafting
• Better balance for Shaper Secret fights
• Increased upkeep for Build Golem spell

Fixes

• Summons in battle now have the "Summon" and "Expendable" traits
• Changed Fire Elemental to Fire Golem in spell book
• Fixed Silver Drift Hollow Mine did not award achievement for clearing the quest line
• Fixed the glyph and artefact equip window not being scrollable when using a controller
• Fixed selection cursor displaying "no valid targets" in reset exploitation skill (and for all skills that don't implement ValidTile-interface)
• Fixed Turn Animal only working on disordered or worse state; Turned state can be cleansed
• Flame armor has no resistance anymore -> cannot be resisted by own troops
• Fixed consume corpse working in any range, now only works in displayed range
• Fixed missile skill Volley previsualization showing wrong damage values and fixed visuals triggering delay when not in camera focus
• Fixed faulty tile definition on Cave 01 Battle map, near the entrance.
• Adjusted Visual representation of Mountain Tiles in Rushwater Down. was not clear enough.
• Fixed some Shaper Stacks being wrongfully assigned to New Purity of Light
• Fixed Hovered-Tile-Indicator not being rendered if occluded
• Fixed loca in Insight Spell popup
• Fixed imbalance in essences of poison coating/toxic distillate
• Fixed tower is still shown as next action after landing
• Fixed issue where autosave would be triggered between an adventure and starting a battle inside of it causing incorrect behavior after loading that autosave.
• Hide new tower levels until unlock says so
• Fixed not localized collect button in apprentice school
• Fixed hex highlight in WorldMapBattleEffect
• Fixed some elven stacks’ power in Alluvyan adventures not scaling correctly
• Fixed faulty tile definition on Worldmap in Region Westguard.
• Reworked hand-placed mine locations in Draycott and Stoneblades.
• Fixed bug that caused not triggering "War" when immediately dropping to 0 reputation
• Fixed reload/recharge statuses being cleansable
• Fixed Demon-form being cancelable by Steadfast/Cleanse
• Shaper Golem now has Construct trait
• Clarified "No Upkeep" wording in summons/mind controlled traits
• Fixed FireBeetle missile attack not being usable as default skill

I'm not sure how much I like the "more hiring locations at the start" thing. Goblins actually have worse stats than other races, so why would you hire them now that you have access to others?

 

[Parabalus]

• Removed the story path where Castle Meldec would vanish

I actually reloaded because of this, was absolutely shitty compared to the alternative - glad they are invested.

They had similar very good updates to FG2.

 

[Beowulf]

Also apparently you can craft a Bag of Eagle Spirit flasks that gives you unlimited amount of those, I need to find out the recipe for it. Google does not help.

You can, but usually it's your hero, that has to equip it and accessing it costs 1 action per potion. Some units can be upgraded to have trinket slots iirc, so that could help.

recipes

 

[whocares]

I will not eat the bugs. I will not live in a pod. I will not use 2FA.

 

[ArchAngel]

For landmark victory some of them are conveniently placed near allfire nodes so that helps.

I would like to know which school gets the Follower spell as that seems super useful. Did you know btw that slaves are so lazy even the flasks they throw deal reduced damage.

And the parch seems decent. With how much imballanced things there are it is nice that the devs are in no rush to fix them. And wisps really needed a nerf. When 5 heroless wisps destroy a circle mage you know there's a problem.

Not too happy abot the new hiring options either. Not having a lot of units and not knowing where to get more really helps to get you exploring early and leads to more patchwork and interesting party compositions.

Allfire locations are I think random. One guy on stream didn't have it on same location I have it.

 

[ArchAngel]

Also apparently you can craft a Bag of Eagle Spirit flasks that gives you unlimited amount of those, I need to find out the recipe for it. Google does not help.

You can, but usually it's your hero, that has to equip it and accessing it costs 1 action per potion. Some units can be upgraded to have trinket slots iirc, so that could help.

recipes

Well that is same as normal potions, only needing to equip on Hero might be a tiny problem, more because than that hero has to move and cast it on unit you want it on which is not a big problem for ranged ones.

 

[Salvo]

Mentalism is completely broken lol, magic coffer makes you ignore the economy completely

 

[whocares]

I will not eat the bugs. I will not live in a pod. I will not use 2FA.

 

[ArchAngel]

Completed my Balanced Alchemist run. My earlier estimate for weeks was a bit off and in the end I got it done on week 34 with getting a hero to 15, researching spells, and becoming friendly with towns.

I really screwed myself early on and spent probably the first 20 weeks just trying to stabilize, and that was a lot of fun. But once I got going, there was no stopping me.

If they keep working on it, I would like there to be some expanded diplomacy options, moar units, the ability to increase combat difficulty separately from strategic difficulty, no nerfs to many of the OP things out there, and there was something else, but I seem to have forgotten.

Now for a short break and then probably another run as an Artificer. I haven't even touched the Western part of the map, and I still have no idea how you get T4 units - I've only seen two in my game.

You get t4 by getting a summon spell that is only on page 4 of a spell school

 

[ArchAngel]

I am getting close to finishing my run, I am now entering week 30. Got two goals finished. Getting all cities happy or getting 5 apprentices is probably going to be the 3rd one.
Running into irritating bugs now. For example charm animal spell that some enemies have ignores requirement for target to be demoralized first...
And Enslave keeps giving me units that are not enslaved after the battle and cost upkeep.

 

[whocares]

I will not eat the bugs. I will not live in a pod. I will not use 2FA.

 

[ArchAngel]

Running into irritating bugs now. For example charm animal spell that some enemies have ignores requirement for target to be demoralized first...

If it's the corrupted elders, they don't need the animal to be demoralized, it's Todd mode for them - it just works.

that is a bug because its description says they do need that for it to work.

 

[whocares]

I will not eat the bugs. I will not live in a pod. I will not use 2FA.

 

[Mortmal]

Now you have to play as a Necro since no one else in the thread is doing it.

Started as necro at advenced difficulty. :D Crafting undead is kinda neat, also got some raise dead spells and sacrificing goblin scum for HP regen and raising zombies, all in the name of greater good. Only problem is undead don't regen normally but after some level ups I got magical regen that effects them.
Seems like a mash up AoW, MoM and Kings Bounty right now.

Have same experience, you can cannibalize goblins to heal your undeads or just wait to get the spell researched. Not sure its as powerful as other mage options although , since you could just enchant live units immediately. Game is surprisingly good roguelike 4X mix. Lack of advertising and reviews was criminal.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Man, Vampires are really overpowered and their acolytes variant is really easy to produce as stacks (3 blue 3 orange).
Then there is that building that revives undead after battles.
Then there is that soul (or item?) that give %10 damage reduction for each undead in your army.
Then there is the bloody flying castle that gives huge bonuses (boni? bony M ? eh ehe) to you.

I kinda wish some dark, evil lord type of wizard campaign too, just to feel like a flying citadel commander from Dragonlance.

 

[ArchAngel]

Running into irritating bugs now. For example charm animal spell that some enemies have ignores requirement for target to be demoralized first...

If it's the corrupted elders, they don't need the animal to be demoralized, it's Todd mode for them - it just works.

that is a bug because its description says they do need that for it to work.

Not on my screen it doesn't. Can't take a screenshot as I wiped a whole bunch of them out recently in my Artificer game, but I made a point of reading that skill. It said nothing about any status requirements.

Found some:

So yeah, working as intended.

I guess they removed that limit in latest patch or better to say fixed the text so it tells the truth.

 

[whocares]

I will not eat the bugs. I will not live in a pod. I will not use 2FA.