chimera: the warrior

[killerking]

Allright, I'm playing through the chimera campaign, and I think that the 2nd level, the warrior, is impossible. When you come at the last hill with all the Fir'Bolg a whole darn lot of wasps come to kill you. Is this even possible to win? I've provided a saved game the hill fight

[Graydon]

Yes it is possible. Even on legendary. Play more, save more, try harder. Success will come to you. Eventually.

[killerking]

I suggest you show me how it's done yourself, or show me a replay. I also noticed that if you lose alot of the fir'Bolg you get a negative %. How is this possible?

[Myrd]

The negative % thing is likely a bug in Myth. Can you upload a film of this bug, so that I can take a look?

[gugusm]

I don't remember how 'exactly' this level looked like but I know that I played Chimera solo on Normal and it was pretty hard to beat.

[Melekor]

I tried that savegame and honestly, it does seem pretty impossible to me. I wonder if something already went wrong before getting to that point which has doomed you.

Does anyone have films of chimera on legendary?

[devSin]

The negative % thing is likely a bug in Myth. Can you upload a film of this bug, so that I can take a look?

You can load the saved game. When you lose (you will lose), the survivor count will be negative.

All the fir'Bolg reinforcements are marked uncontrollable, so the game doesn't count them even when you're given control of them (you can only ever win this level with 12 survivors, your heroes and the wolves, even though there are like 30 fir'Bolg you get to play with). But it subtracts them from your survivor count when they die.

[Myrd]

Thanks. I'll take a look at the bug.

[devSin]

I tried that savegame and honestly, it does seem pretty impossible to me. I wonder if something already went wrong before getting to that point which has doomed you.

I don't think it's anything related to the updates. I looked in 1.3, and the level played just as badly.

In Myth II 1.3, the game supported replacing the background for the new game badge (now usurped by the difficulty and plugin tab panes)--when you selected a Chimera level, a nice picture replaced Soulblighter in the pane (the collection ##s#, chimera new game, is the 185x138 replacement badge only), even if the interface was still default (I guess the game looked for the special replacement from the plugin when the level is highlighted in the list).

In 1.7, you get the Soulblighter pic whether a Myth II or Chimera level is selected and whether the game is in the default or Chimera interfaces. Is it possible to restore the old prettiness?

[Avatara]

Chimera is meant to be hard... harder than the standard Myth 2 campaign anyway. I'm pretty sure Legendary difficult was originally meant to be played online with a good number of players (or with save abuse and lowering the speed), and even then you have to micro like crazy.

Don't even get me started on the last level, that thing is EVIL. It also doesn't help the fact that it suffers from Myth 2 campaign syndrome i.e. if you lose a critical unit like a dorf early you might as well restart the level because you aren't beating it.

[devSin]

Don't even get me started on the last level, that thing is EVIL. It also doesn't help the fact that it suffers from Myth 2 campaign syndrome i.e. if you lose a critical unit like a dorf early you might as well restart the level because you aren't beating it.

Unlike Myth II (not to mention Myth), though, there's no sense at all to this level.

You have a fast-moving, flying enemy able to pass most terrain types, and your hallmark design is to group them all on a small hill at the highest point on the map with no cover whatsoever and then script it so that they all try to move up onto the tiny plateau (which can break if you have too many units and one of the heroes gets stuck, unable to ascend, hanging in uncontrollable fake cutscene mode indefinitely) but don't wait for them to get anywhere so that the swarm comes from all directions when your troops have turned their backs and are all fighting to get up the hill instead of taking preliminary shots, not to mention that you've chosen to put the player in charge of units that can get maybe one shot off before the wasps reach it and have no use whatsoever once they do reach it, and you give them the "fever arrow," which is an uninspired pus packet that doesn't explode, that doesn't affect wasps (but does affect allies). Maybe they meant for the fir'Bolgs to die and Fenris to use his special ability to smite the buzzers, but his special ability should have been made useful in that case. Or maybe the preferred "tactic" is to just run your heroes and wolves off the hill and wait for everyone to die so you can pick off the bees with units that can actually fight them (or get the wasps to stick on impassable terrain or scenery objects like the trees in the forest so you can fight them one at a time and obtain the satisfaction of exploiting the engine's limitations).

I wouldn't say so much that Chimera is meant to be hard, but that poor design more or less locked them into a stupidly-tough campaign <insert standard Myth III jibe here>.

Grrr! :-)

[Avatara]

You are totally right about this level. I don't like the last part either... it just screams "bad mission design" for me. Nevertheless, it does make the map hard (in a bad way, though).

I think the mission design in Chimera is kinda hit or miss... There's the Warrior level we are talking about and The Archer one, which I find most boring. But then you have the graveyard one (remembers me of zombie movies) which is great and the beach level is also interesting. Oh and that battle at the temple/masouleum of the dead mage (I forgot all the names, sorry) is pretty cool with the ghost thrall surrounding you.

[killerking]

I've beaten allmost all chimera levels legendary, multiplayer, no casualties. The last level can be done, but I still need to do it. The warrior just seems so impossible . And the baron, that level is ok until the moment you have to defend the camp, there are just way to much raids coming at the same time

So, it still stands, nobody can show me how to do 'the warrior' on legendary? I first thought it could be done by going down and take 1 squad at a time, but it seems that all the units have to be at the top to trigger the talking and the wasps.

[mck2h]

That's what I wanted to ask

Can somebody show me the film of the level?

(I succeeded it in normal difficuly. I need legendary film.)

[haravikk]

It's fairly easy to do co-op, but solo you have to play at one quarter speed and save like crazy if you're trying to win. It's difficult enough on lower difficulties due to the mass of fir'bolg killing each other like crazy.

Just a generally badly designed level IMO.
As for the negative percentage, it's because they start uncontrollable, so Myth never adds them to the number of total units you've had, so when it calculates the percentage it gets a bit screwy.

I don't know if it's worth fixing that "bug", as there's now a scripting flag that lets you have uncontrollable units that don't count as casualties, so for any new maps the units should be placed as player-owned, and then made uncontrollable by script and then made visible (to avoid a chunk of the map appearing to the player early).

I have recently replayed Chimera, and the later levels really are better suited to co-op, but the early ones are not. It's a bit of an annoying mix really. The camp on the Baron can be managed, but it means bunching your units up really tight to avoid early charges and things, and keep a close eye on the overhead at one quarter speed.