[SP/MP] The Return of the Revenge of Alet Zhav

The problem with undead is they won't stay dead. Especially for a powerful lich like Alet Zhav, who has apprentices and cultists and hidden instructions on how to bring him back from the dead again and again.

Someone broke into the old cemetery, where Alet Zhav was once buried. Quickly, your party dashes to the smashed gates to stop the deadly ritual before Alet Zhav can return once more. But you're too late, and the ritual has brought more back more than Alet Zhav! Kill Alet Zhav and his minion now, before they have the time to raise an army to overrun all of Cardhuntria!
---

Spoiler: Screenshot

---
With the death of the lich and the cultist, the remaining bodies collapse like puppets with their strings cut. "This time," you mutter, "We're burying him in some unmarked hole in the ground where nobody will find him."

---

So, this was inspired by an accidental bit in my previous map. The zombies and skeletons will keep respawning while lich or the necromancer live. It seems relatively balanced in single player, it might be a fun multiplayer map too, but I need to tweak the balance for that, most players are a bit better than Gary, and would use the skeletons and zombies better as a screen, and not just pass when they still have moves left.

Also, the cultist's "Run team" is really swingy. I may have to swap him out for a different kind of necromancer. It's not as bad in single player, but in multiplayer, a human can concentrate all their swarming guys and start nearly one-shotting people with Zombie Mob and Swarming Attack.

 

Interesting map but a bit too unbalanced i won on my first try, in one round. - my suggestion is to add more minions (zombies and/or skeletons).

 

Maybe, I'd prefer not to add too many more minions, it gets laggy, and screws up things in multiplayer. Rather than adding more monsters, I could update the respawn rate, or upgrade some of the skeletons to armored skeletons or burning skeletons.

How did you manage one round, anyway? Do I need to make the graveyard bigger?

 

Updated with armored skeletons, and an extra skeleton, for making it harder. This is for the AI, this would probably be wildly unbalanced in multiplayer, because humans are better than Gary.

EDIT: This also contains a fixed party, if you want to one-shot it with souped up elf warriors or firestorm dwarves, just click the "use MP party" button. Or to play it multiplayer.

 

Good idea

Maybe bigger?

Spoiler: What deck i used

I used two nimble elf warriors and my priest drew x2 Demonic Power and x1 Inspiration which then combined with Altruism which it also drew and i drew a Unholy Wellspring put everything on one elf and that elf also drew elven manuvers which means movement and alet zhav also ran towards the elf making it easyer and then using the rest of movement ran to blood priest who didnt run away and died - so basically i got lucky

Edit:

Spoiler: Addition to what made it easier

Looking at your screenshot i can see that the blood priest also ran towards the warrior

 

Just as a heads up if you ever want to submit a singleplayer version of this for Mauve Manticore, you would need to set characters for the player (MM doesn't use constructed singleplayer parties).

 

that looks like a 14x14 i thought you wanted 12x12 or even 10x10 maps? - (says i who makes 120x100 size maps )

 

1. The map hasn't been submitted to Mauve Manticore (yet?)
2. I haven't tested it at all
3. Map size is a guideline ... party restrictions are a hard constraint, just thought I'd let this nice person know

 

He thinks I'm nice! Heh.

Thanks, I actually am tweaking a single player party for it from the available AI characters, because while it's fun to use your own party, and I have no problem letting players feel like they got clever and beat everything, a party of three kamikaze elf warriors or dwarf wizards with nukes takes some of the drama out of the mission.

I didn't realize there was a guideline for the size of Mauve Manticore maps, all I'd seen was "not too huge" in the discussion thread. Maybe I missed that mention? I've been thinking about submitting a scenario, and this did get pretty good reactions from playtesters online over the snowed in weekend.

 

So I revised this a few times, trying to tweak the map didn't get me anywhere, I guess I had it right the first time. I took the walls off the sides except where the gate is, so now it's 12x13, and I think the PCs are fairly balanced.

Spoiler: Starting

The armored skeletons had too many HP, so they weren't dying, so the whole idea I had of wading through skeletons and zombies and hacking them down and them rising back up wasn't quite working. I'm still not getting quite the mileage I wanted out of that mechanic, but part of that could be because Gary runs the squishy wizards right up to your party. I wonder if blocking terrain like the lid of his crypt would at least make them walk farther.

Or maybe I just need to leave this as is, and try something like a necromancer duel with the respawning, or a necromancer with some minions vs a boss monster... Hmm.

 

So, I think it's more fun to play this as the baddies. Partly because zombies and skeletons have some really strong attacks, which aren't overwhelming in single player because the AI is kinda dumb about it. Which was one of the problems, Gary kept running the lich up close to you, since he has 10 point bashes. He would never stand back and properly taunt the puny mortals, while raining destruction down upon their foolish heads!

So, now you get to do that. Also, I found it was pretty fun to play as the necromancer when I was testing this in multiplayer.

So here's the newest version, with yet another different filename. Which will probably have another different name if I put it in the MM thread. The respawning time for the skeletons and zombies went back to 3, because at 2 it's just too easy to stall everything up by the gate and keep sending in the rising dead.

Spoiler: Screenshot!

 

I found it extremely easy. The enemies can't kill your minions fast enough. By the time half of them were dead,the rest respawned. Maybe switch the AIs to stronger characters such as Mom's or give us a round limit to kill them all(reinforcements are coming!)

 

Hrm.

Balance is hard!

 

I like doing that too - i make a map them swap the spawn locations and play in the ai's place, and find out how easy it is and have to teak stuff to make it harder for myself

 

Okay, cranked up difficulty. Not sure what more I could do to crank it up without completely abandoning the idea of the undead rising again, or just throwing a couple more high level adventurers in.

You are the lichAlet Zhav, and you have just clawed your way out of your latest tomb.

You have at your disposal the following:
1 cultist, who just performed the emergency resurrection ritual you had left form him, for this very eventuality.
2 recently buried bodies that absorbed some of the bled off energy of the ritual that returned you to this plane
2 somewhat less recently buried bodies that your un-living regeneration has corrupted to your cause.
Not much to start your return to dominate Cardhuntria, but it's a start.

And then Mom's party of adventurers just happened to be walking their dogs by the cemetery when you smashed the lid off the sarcophagus. Because of course they were.

All you have is some unready minions and your br...the unholy energies swirling in your skull that bear the imprint of what used to be your brains. There's enough background unholy energy to pull the puppet bodies back to their feet if they fall...eventually.

Spoiler: Screenie!

 

I managed to win this after 3 tries, but I was lucky. The respawn does not work at all, did you test it? I see from the file that you tried to set it to 4 but I think that's a bit too slow much, mom's adventurers can kill them pretty fast.
I edited it to 3 round myself and it seems pretty balanced that way.

 

Ah, the resurrection didn't work because there is no respawn group 4, it's 1, 2, 3, and triangular. Note to self: read the instructions!

I'd tested it on 3, and it had felt kinda easy, but I've played this a dozen times in the past week. Also, one thing that's really swingy is if you draw Only Bones or not. If you do, your skeletons can hold off everybody except the bashy dwarf, until they fumble away their bones.

I probably should clean up the spawn points too, I'd had a bunch more since I'd wanted it to start with a swarm of undead for you to hack through, but that didn't work out.

 

Yeah, just bones is pretty OP on this map,I managed to win without respawns at all thanks to drawing it first turn.Otherwise, 3 round is about the time they take to kill off all the minions.
If you want to keep the big swarm of undead,you could switch to cardotron(and he is less vulnerable to just bones) but that won't make much sense story-wise.

 

They also brought along their trusty robot! (you can have that one for free)

 

There another multiplayer bashy warrior, or swap in a wizard or cleric for one of the adventurers or dogs, too.