Beasts and Bumpkins

                    A few hints from Sue

Plague

Keep an eye on your folk if 'healing plague' is an option for your
priest. If they get a green haze round their heads, zap 'em quick
or they'll keel over and the disease will spread.

Avoiding Traps

Your bumpkins will gaily walk onto these and blow themselves up.
If you send one through to find the safe route (using your
wizard's Detect Traps spell if you have it) then build a path
along the route, life gets much easier. If you position one or
more bumpkins on the path and select them all, you can click
further along the path and they will walk along it neatly and
safely.

Traps can sometimes be destroyed using a fireball spell. Oil
traps can be ignited and will burn away to leave a safe route.

Attacking the Enemy

I like to go in with the benefit of numbers so use plenty of
fighters, eg 8 footmen plus my wizard on Mission 9. Fire any
buildings in your way rather than attacking the locals, this will
give you a clear shot later.

Now some hints on a few specific missions. The first 9 are pretty
straightforward:

The Giants (Mission 10)

You're told invisibility will be a help. Build and build and let
the bumpkins breed until you have the required 10000 coins to buy
the shovel from the monk in the northeast. Send 3 footmen with
this to dig into the zombie-infested building in the northwest.
Let one get the holy sword.  Put each footman by one of the 3
switches and pull them until the door to the room with the
pentagram opens. Send a footman through here to get the cloak of
invisibility. Then move him down to the giants' fortress. He can
safely go in and torch it without them noticing. (En route you
could detour into the forest to get 5 piles of gold coins by the
building where you found the cloak.) Incidentally, the 3 potions
that the monk has are healing potions and are free once you've
bought the shovel.

There is a bug in this bit - I managed to walk all 3 footmen into
the room with the teleport without opening the magic door, just by
using the hand cursor on the teleport. But they can't get back out
of the room the same way. This seems a common bug with teleport
scenarios.

Destroying your Enemy's Base (Mission 11)

You get attacked a lot at the start of this level so survival is
all important. Also build wisely and keep up the population.  I
thought at first this was a toughie, then discovered that if I
waited long enough, my opponent's folk just died off! If the
mission just ends, that's what's happened. If you want to do it
yourself, though, seek out the Fountain of Youth to the north,
where you can heal up your soldiers etc. No key? It's nearby,
guarded by a zombie.  Your enemy's base is to the far northwest.
By the time I got there, he only had one woman left - how sad.

The Bomberman (Mission 12)

You've got a bomberman, the only person who can destroy your
enemy's observation post to the west. Problem is, he also has a
bomberman - or rather a string of them! His bomberman comes from a
cave to the south of your village and heads northeast. Send some
soldiers directly to your observation post as soon as the game
starts.  Then get them to guard it. I also positioned an archer on
the bomberman's route. He used to pick them off as soon as they
came into view ... quite sad to see a line of little corpses ...
not! Your bomberman is trapped on an island - easy to find it to
the north, but not so easy to get there. You'll need lots of
soldiers to deal with the beasts (wasps and dark wolves) too. Head
to the far left to find the enemy's observation post and kill his
guards (takes some doing).

To the far right is a circle of trees. Use Ctrl/left click on some
of them (I used the lower left) to destroy them and break into the
circle.  Two ogres appear; I had 8 archers there and picked them
off. Send one archer into the temple to teleport to the
bomberman's island. Walk to the right until you're told you've
activated a mechanism and freed him.  Walk him out to the temple
but before sending him through, send several foot soldiers to the
tree circle because enemy foot soldiers will appear and home in on
bomberman. In the confusion of the fighting, avoid the soldiers
and send him through to the observation post and victory!

Sending the Plague (Mission 13)

What a jolly thing to do, coming up to Christmas. First you need
to find the monastery where you can buy the spell (10,000GP). It's
to the west, through a maze and past some traps. Just send one bod
through and your priest will gain the spell. The opposition are
south of a mountain range to the far east. I sent the priest as
close as possible and cast 'plague' at any of his people I could
reach. It won't take long for them all to pop their clogs, despite
the ministrations of their own priest!















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