Walkthrough - Guide for Majesty

                      Majesty: the Fantasy Kingdom Sim
                                     and
                       Majesty: the Northern Expansion

             Walkthroughs of Advanced, Expert and Master Quests
                       (Plus Some Other Information)

                             By Steven W. Carter
                            ([email protected])

                                Last Updated
                               April 10, 2001


*********************
* TABLE OF CONTENTS *
*********************

1. Introduction

2. Technical Note

3. Gameplay Notes
3.1. Casting Spells on Your Heroes
3.2. Defenses
3.3. Making Money

4. Majesty FKS Advanced Quests
4.1. A Deal with the Demon
4.2. Elven Treachery
4.3. Free the Slaves
4.4. Hold Off the Goblin Hordes
4.5. Quest for the Crown
4.6. Quest for the Magic Ring

5. Majesty FKS Expert Quests
5.1. Brashnard's Ultimate Sphere of Power
5.2. The Dark Forest
5.3. The Day of Reckoning
5.4. The Fertile Plain
5.5. Slay the Mighty Dragon
5.6. Tomb of the Dragon King
5.7. Vengeance of the Liche Queen

6. Majesty NE Advanced Quests
6.1. The Clash of Empires
6.2. The Fortress of Ixmil
6.3. Rise of the Ratmen
6.4. Trade Routes
6.5. Urban Renewal

7. Majesty NE Expert Quests
7.1. Darkness Falls
7.2. Legendary Heroes
7.3. The Siege
7.4. The Valley of the Serpents

8. Majesty NE Master Quests

9. Downloadable Quests
9.1. The Wrath of Krolm

10. Version History

11. Permissions and Updates


*******************
* 1. INTRODUCTION *
*******************

This is mostly intended to be a resource for people having trouble solving the advanced,
expert, and master quests of Majesty: the Fantasy Kingdom Sim (Majesty FKS) and its expansion
pack, Majesty: the Northern Expansion (Majesty NE).  In the sections below I'll provide fairly
detailed walkthroughs for the quests, and I'll also give some (hopefully) useful playing tips.
I used version 1.3 for Majesty FKS and 1.1.0.7 for Majesty NE.

I've also included my best playing times for each quest.  You can use these times as a frame
of reference for how you're doing -- or for entertainment value in the case of ``Wrath of
Krolm.''  I think my times qualify as good but not great.


*********************
* 2. TECHNICAL NOTE *
*********************

If you started up Majesty NE and were dismayed to see all of your high scores and playing
times gone, don't despair.  There's an easy method to restore your data.

Do the following:

1. Go to the directory where you installed Majesty NE and delete the files hiscores.sav and
questdata_majx.sav.

2. Go to the directory where you installed Majesty FKS and copy the files hiscores.sav and
questdata.sav.

3. Go back to the directory where you installed Majesty NE and paste the two files you just
copied.

4. Now just rename questdata.sav (in the Majesty NE directory) to questdata_majx.sav.

Everything should be restored.  Note, though, that this will erase anything you might have
done in Majesty NE before copying and pasting the files.


*********************
* 3. GAMEPLAY NOTES *
*********************

3.1 Casting Spells on Your Heroes
---------------------------------

Even at the best of times it is difficult to select units.  And during combat, when you want
to cast heal or invisibility or some other spell on one of your heroes, it can be almost
impossible.  You'll be just as likely to cast the spell on an enemy unit as you will be to
cast it on your own.

However, there is a way to get around this.  Instead of selecting the spell and then clicking
on the unit, you can select the unit, then select the spell, and then click on the unit's
portrait on the interface bar on the left side of the screen.  It might still be difficult to
initially select the unit, but at least this way you'll never miss.

3.2 Defenses
------------

For your perimeter defense, don't rely on guardhouses.  They are expensive and incredibly
weak, and there are numerous creatures that can destroy them single-handedly.  The only time I
use guardhouses on the perimeter is to protect a wizard guild.  The guardhouse still won't
stop anything, but it gives wizards something to hide behind as they attack the enemy.

Instead, use your guilds on the perimeter, and especially those guilds that have lots of hit
points.  The perfect choice is the warrior guild.  It has 800 hit points, and, if creatures
attack nearby and none of your heroes respond, you can always use the call-to-arms option to
bring your warriors home to quash the threat.  Dwarven settlements are also a good selection.

The place to use guardhouses is in your interior defense.  Specifically, you should put them
next to your marketplaces to protect them against trolls, and you should put them next to
sewers to prevent sewer rats from killing your peasants and tax collectors.

3.3 Making Money
----------------

The best building for generating gold is (without surprise) the marketplace.  The important
thing to realize about marketplaces is that they initially produce 250 gold per game day
(before modifications and item sales), and each upgrade only adds 50 gold per day.  That means
it is far more profitable to have, for example, three level one marketplaces than one level
three marketplace.  They'll cost about the same but the former will produce over twice as much
gold as the latter.

The exception to the rule occurs with trading posts.  The level of the destination marketplace
is the multiplier used on the amount of gold carried by caravans, and so you want all of your
destination marketplaces to be level three.

One often overlooked money building is the inn.  One inn will produce 100 gold per game day,
and, given its low cost, will quickly start making you a profit.  Inns also grow slowly in
cost, so you can put down half a dozen inns and start making a profit with all of them within
a game week.  Plus, inns can give you a fountain early in the game, and that has beneficial
effects as well.


**********************************
* 4. MAJESTY FKS ADVANCED QUESTS *
**********************************

4.1. A Deal with the Demon
--------------------------

Objective:

1. Accumulate 100,000 gold within 40 days.

My Best Time:

27 days

Walkthrough:

There will be several creature lairs on the map, and your palace is going to start somewhere
near the middle of the map -- all of which means you're going to have company at your base
quickly.  Luckily, you will have a temple of krypta, a warrior guild, and a wizard guild at
your disposal.  Wizards are too fragile for this quest, so train a pair of warriors and a pair
of priestesses, and then upgrade your palace to level two.  Meanwhile, also build a
marketplace and, once you get a feel for where attacks will come from or see where the sewers
pop up, a guardhouse or two.

Your buildings start out in three groups on the map: your main base in the middle somewhere, a
warrior guild all alone on one edge, and a trio of buildings on another edge.  The trio isn't
especially important, so if it doesn't happen to end up right next to your main base, forget
about it and let it be destroyed.  (But remember to take it off your repair and tax routes
first.)  The warrior guild is easy to protect since you can use call-to-arms, and if it far
away from your base go ahead and put a guardhouse and a trading post next to it.  Trading
posts are really useful on this map, but only put them where they will be safe.

You don't really need to do a lot with your heroes for this quest.  Don't worry about
upgrading your wizard guild or researching at your blacksmith.  Just create another priestess
and warrior and let them do their thing, replacing them if necessary.  Whenever they happen to
uncover a creature lair, put an attack flag on it and let them destroy it.

So spend most of the time during the first 10 or so years building up marketplaces and inns,
with a guardhouse or two thrown in for defense and for shortening tax routes.  I recommend you
put up three marketplaces (with at least one at level three) and four or five inns (for the
extra income and a fountain).  And be sure to build an elven bungalow as soon as possible.
With those buildings and perhaps a trading post or two, you should make 5-6k a day.  Then you
can just sit back and watch your heroes at work for about 15 days until you have 100,000 gold.

Note: If you're really desperate in this quest, you can always ``cheat'' and use save-and-
restore with the gambling house.  Just save before you gamble, save every time you win, and
restore every time you don't.  If you're patient, you'll gain the gold you need with few game
days passing.

4.2. Elven Treachery
--------------------

Objectives:

1. Destroy all elven buildings and units within 30 days, or
2. Accumulate 50,000 gold within 30 days.

My Best Time:

23 days

Walkthrough:

I'll give walkthroughs for both possible objectives, but first a note about elf heroes: they
have a thing about guardhouses that shoot arrows.  If they see one, they'll just run away.  So
defending your base is pretty easy in this quest: just space out some guardhouses along the
perimeter of your base.

The first way to solve the quest is to generate 50,000 gold.  This is a pretty boring and
wimpy solution, but it is the easiest.  Start out by building a gnome hovel, and then place a
couple of guardhouses at the most obvious routes into your base.  Then build a ranger guild
and train four rangers so you can upgrade your palace to level two.  Then just finish placing
perimeter guardhouses, and put three marketplaces and as many inns as you can fit into your
corner of the map.  Then just crank up the speed setting and twiddle your thumbs for 10-15
minutes.  You should generate over 2000 gold per day and build up 50,000 gold before Day 30
(but not by much).

The more exciting solution to the quest is to kill all of the elves and destroy their
buildings.  Once again build a gnome hovel first, and then build a couple guardhouses to
defend your base and keep the enemy elves from picking off your peasants.  Next build a ranger
guild, a warrior guild, a blacksmith, and a marketplace.  Begin training and researching, and
upgrade your palace when you can.  Don't train beyond four units yet because your units will
probably get killed at this point.  They don't seem to have a problem fighting against
multiple enemies at once, and warriors are slower than elves and will get killed when they try
to flee.

Instead, let your guardhouses do the bulk of the work in protecting your base while you build
temples to agrela and dauros, and then start creating paladins.  Don't train any monks or
healers, but upgrade the temple to agrela to level three so you can help out your units if
they get into trouble.  Also during this period, it's a good idea to build another marketplace
and some inns, and to upgrade your blacksmith so your paladins will have good equipment.  You
might also want to build another warrior guild or two, just to finish the mission more
quickly.

Then it's just a matter of search and destroy for your paladins.  Keep training / resurrecting
rangers until you find four groups of elf buildings, and then just set attack flags on the
enemy buildings one at a time until they're all gone.  One enemy building of interest is the
elven hideout.  It contains 15,000 gold in its coffers, and the units who destroy it will be
able to afford all the equipment they want.

4.3. Free the Slaves
--------------------

Objectives:

1. Destroy the four slave pits.
2. Kill Url-Shekk.

My Best Time:

16 days

Walkthrough:

Enemy forces won't arrive at your base for a while, so start out by getting your economy
rolling.  Quickly put a marketplace next to the entrance to your palace, and place a warrior
guild next to the marketplace to protect it.  Place the warrior guild right away so the
incoming gnome hovels won't get in the way.  Then train a couple gnomes and four rogues, and
advance your palace to level two.

Next, build a blacksmith to reduce the cost of future buildings, research healing potions at
the marketplace, and place a guardhouse in a useful place (such as next to the sewer that will
probably have appeared).  All of this should take about a day and tap your funds.

Now, as your gold permits, add a ranger guild and start training rangers and warriors.  On
days 2 and 4 you'll receive gold from a neighboring kingdom (4000 gold in total), and you can
use this to help in training units and also to upgrade your rogue guild and marketplace.  Then
proceed to build up your base normally.

Let your rangers do their thing, and eventually they'll find a slave pit.  You might also want
to put out some explore flags so your rogues will help out.  Then just put an attack flag on
the pit, and your rogues and warriors will get to work.  Once the pit is destroyed, you'll
receive some units as reinforcements.  These units can be paladins, gnomes, warriors of
discord, and priestesses.  They don't need a home temple or guild, but make sure you have at
least one inn so they'll have a place to rest.

There are three more pits somewhere on the map, and there is also an outpost (containing three
houses and a trading post) for you to find.  I ignored the outpost and let it supply me with
gold while it lasted (which wasn't terribly long).  If you want to protect it, place a warrior
guild next to it and use call-to-arms whenever there is trouble.

After you destroy the second pit, a large wave of rats and other wimpy creatures will swarm at
your base.  Use call-to-arms to bring your warriors home, and place attack flags on various
enemies to get your other units interested.  It's not a bad idea to have a couple guardhouses
at key points in your base, but four warriors can take down the entire attack on their own
(albeit slowly) so guardhouses aren't really necessary, and you can use your gold on more
units instead.

Before destroying the last pit, make sure you have a temple to agrela and four healers
trained.  When Url-Shekk appears, he'll wander around the map for a while, but finally he'll
stop in a place and fight.  He has a fast but weak ranged fire attack, and if you have a
healer in the area, she'll be able to heal faster than Url-Shekk can damage your units.  Then
it's just a matter of putting a big bounty on his head and getting enough of your units to him
to kill him.  He only has 255 hit points, and your warriors and paladins should be able to
kill him even if your healers don't get involved.

4.4. Hold Off the Goblin Hordes
-------------------------------

Objective:

1. Destroy all goblin settlements.

My Best Time:

9 days

Walkthrough:

You'll come under attack almost immediately, but you'll still have some things going for you:
two guardhouses, two warriors of discord, and some allied wizards.  Plus you'll have 15,000
gold, and the allied wizards will donate about 6000 more gold to your cause during the first
four days.  So you'll have the means and necessity to get started quickly.

Unfortunately, you can't build gnome hovels during this quest, but your palace will start out
at level two, and so you'll have four peasants right away.  Put them to work on a marketplace
(next to your warrior guild), and while that's in progress move your ranger guild closer to
your palace, research arrows for the guardhouses, build a wizard guild, and train warriors and
rangers.  Then put a blacksmith and library wherever is convenient, and build a rogue guild
and upgrade it as well.

Train a full complement of units for each guild and let them pretty much work on their own
while you upgrade and research at your library, blacksmith, and marketplace.  If your units
stumble across a goblin lair, put an attack flag on it and it won't last long.

You'll be under constant attacks from the goblins, so most of your forces will stay at your
base to defend it.  But a few units (like the rogues) will venture out to destroy flagged
lairs.  There are only 15 goblin lairs, and it won't take too long to destroy them all.

Just ignore the starting inn since it isn't useful enough to protect from the goblins.  You
can also ignore the allied wizards.  On Day 5 their guild will stop being invulnerable, but
wizards are pretty good about killing goblins, and they should be able to take care of
themselves -- and perhaps even help you out by destroying a nearby goblin lair or two.

There aren't any surprises in the quest.  You just need to explore and destroy.

4.5. Quest for the Crown
------------------------

Objective:

1. Find and destroy the crown's tower.

My Best Time:

20 days

Walkthrough:

Incoming!  You'll immediately be attacked by 15 minotaurs, and your goal in the first few
minutes of the quest should be to minimize the damage as much as possible.  To that end, start
cranking out units right away, and if you see minotaurs approaching one of your wizard towers,
enchant it so it can defend itself.  Meanwhile, build a marketplace somewhere that looks safe
and upgrade it to sell potions so your heroes will last longer.

You will have good wizard spell coverage at the start of the quest, so take advantage of it.
Upgrade your wizard guild to level three, and wherever you see three or more minotaurs
together, give them a zap with a lightning storm.  The minotaurs will attack in three groups
of five at the start, and a couple of well-placed spells can really decimate their numbers.

Once you hold off the initial onslaught, the quest should be pretty straightforward.  You just
have to find the tower with the crown in it.  The tower is probably in one of the corners of
the map, and it will be guarded by two evil occuli.  So if you find an occulus during your
explorations, set explore flags in the area until you find the tower, and then flag the tower
itself.

While the search for the tower is going on, simply build up your base like normal, and do
whatever upgrading and researching you can.  There are two elven outposts on the map, and
they'll join your kingdom when you find them.  That should give you enough of a boost to your
economy to allow you to build all the heroes you need.  There are also a handful of creature
lairs that you can destroy if you want.

Once you destroy the crown's tower, nothing bad happens.  The quest simply ends.

4.6. Quest for the Magic Ring
-----------------------------

Objective:

1. Recover the ring of healing.

My Best Time:

17 days

Walkthrough:

You'll start with a temple to helia, so go ahead and start training four solarii while you
construct your base.  Put down a blacksmith first and then a marketplace.  By that time you
should have your four solarii so upgrade your palace to level two.  When the elves offer to
join your kingdom, let them and build an elven bungalow.

There is another kingdom on the map, and they'll be allied with you.  In fact, on Day 4 they
will even give you some gold.  Take advantage by building another marketplace and doing some
upgrades.  Eventually you should build a ranger guild, a warrior guild, a temple to agrela and
a temple to dauros.  Let your rangers explore the map while you train paladins, and also
upgrade your temple to agrela to level three so you can help out your units.

Eventually somebody will find the tower with the ring in it.  It will be guarded by some
daemonwood, but your solarii or paladins should be able to handle them (perhaps will a few
spells from you).  Once you then destroy the tower, all sorts of bad things will happen.  The
allied kingdom will turn against you, and so you'll suddenly have to fight them.  Plus, three
black phantoms will appear at the site of the tower, and their spells will probably be able to
kill most of your units.  Lastly, a special item box (the ring) will appear on the ground next
to the black phantoms.

All you have to do at this point is grab the box and make a dash to the ``hidden ring site''
that will appear somewhere else on the map (usually in the middle somewhere).  The problem is
that most your units will run from the black phantoms and never get to the box.  If you're
unlucky, you'll have to fight the black phantoms and go through a lot of units / resurrections
before killing them.  If you're lucky, some enterprising unit will dodge the phantoms and grab
the ring.  In my best game, my toughest solarii happened to die right next to the ring box,
and so once the phantoms wandered away a little, I resurrected her and she grabbed the ring
and dropped it off.  In another game, one of my heroes grabbed the ring right after the tower
fell, and it delivered the ring during the confusion.  So you have a few options, and you
might want to save your game right before attacking the tower just in case the black phantoms
really do a number on you.

Note: If you have problems with the other kingdom claiming the ring before you can, your best
option is probably to destroy the kingdom before attacking the ring tower.  They don't upgrade
their buildings or do any research as far as I can tell, and so they're not difficult to
defeat.


********************************
* 5. MAJESTY FKS EXPERT QUESTS *
********************************

5.1. Brashnard's Ultimate Sphere of Power
-----------------------------------------

Objective:

1. Locate and acquire the seven shards of Brashnard's Sphere.

My Best Time:

26 days

Walkthrough:

You'll start out with two temples to krolm on either side of your palace.  Immediately start
training barbarians; you'll come under attack from a multitude of spiders, spitters, and
undead very soon.  While you're training, build a marketplace next to the entrance to your
palace and place a guardhouse next to it to protect it.  Then upgrade your palace to level
two.

As soon as you see enemy creatures, and as soon as you have six barbarians, use rage-of-krolm.
Rage-of-krolm is expensive, but it should prevent some of your barbarians from dying, it
should prevent a bunch of graveyards from littering your base, and it should hopefully give
you some veteran units when the first wave of attacks is over.  I used it three times during
the first wave, and I only lost one barbarian (as opposed to about 10 when I didn't use it).

Now work on your base and do things that will help out your barbarians.  Make sure your
marketplace sells potions.  Build a blacksmith and research weapons and armor.  Add a wizard
guild so you can cast invisibility.  Then get to work adding another marketplace and some inns
so you can make money, and build a ranger guild and rogue guild so you can explore the map.
Keep replacing your barbarians as necessary so you always have eight.

Note that rangers will follow and support barbarians, so they won't explore the map as well as
they usually do.  You'll have to use explore flags, and you might want to build a second rogue
guild just so you'll explore more quickly.  The shard shrines are usually located along the
edge of the map, so that's where you should put the flags.

Each time you destroy a shard shrine, a magic item box will fall to the ground and some enemy
creatures will appear.  The creatures won't be very powerful (harpies, hellboars, and so
forth) but the magic items will be nice.  You'll probably have the most problems fighting the
shrine guards, which can include rock golems, evil occuli, and dragons.  But just throw your
heroes at them until they fall.  Once you've destroyed all seven shrines, you'll automatically
put the shards together to form the sphere (even if your heroes aren't holding all the
shards), and the mission will end.

5.2. The Dark Forest
--------------------

Objectives:

1. Cure your kingdom.
2. Kill the witch king.

My Best Time:

27 days

Walkthrough:

You'll start out with just a warrior guild, and you won't be able to build any other guilds or
temples until you find the nearby temple to fervus.  But that's ok; no enemy creatures will
attack you for a while, and so you can start working on your economy.  Surround your palace
with three marketplaces, a blacksmith, and three or four inns (as many as fit in).

Only train one more warrior, and set explore flags around your base.  Your warriors will
either find a message stump or a statue.  The stump lies directly in line between your palace
and the temple to fervus, and there are four statues surrounding the temple.  So either
discovery will tip you off to the location of the temple, and you should set more explore
flags as necessary.

Once you find the temple to fervus, you'll need to make a choice.  You can either keep the
temple and then use warriors of discord and priestesses, or you can destroy the temple and use
paladins and healers.  I prefer the latter combination, and so I decided to destroy the
temple.  For that case, turn off repairs for the temple and set a bounty on it, delete any
statues you might have found, and build a rogue guild and train some rogues.  They'll make
short work of the temple.

Once you have four heroes, upgrade your palace and build an elven bungalow.  You should now
have a significant stream of money coming in, so put it to use.  Build up your base and start
cranking out heroes.  Add a ranger guild first so your rangers can help you explore the map.
You should also set explore flags around the edges of the map (and particularly in the
corners) to find enemy lairs and the witch king's tower.  Destroy any lairs and creatures you
find, and then focus on the tower.

Surrounding the tower you'll find several daemonwood.  Put attack flags on them to draw your
paladins / warriors of discord to the area.  Finish off the daemonwood and then destroy the
tower.

When the tower falls, the witch king will appear on the map (but not where the tower was) and
all the daemonwood you haven't killed yet (on all parts of the map) will head for your base.
The witch king will continually create spiders, so even if you haven't explored the entire map
yet, it shouldn't take too long to figure out where he is.  Once you do, put a huge bounty on
his head and watch your heroes rush to greet him.  Use heal and resurrect spells as necessary,
but it shouldn't be too difficult to kill him.  Two mid- to high-level paladins can do the job
with no problem.

5.3. The Day of Reckoning
-------------------------

Objective:

1. Survive.

My Best Time:

22 days

Walkthrough:

This is a difficult and annoying quest.  It's difficult because you'll face all of the super
bad guys from the earlier quests -- the witch king, liche queen, Vendral and so forth -- and
it's annoying because your base will be spread out, there will be houses all over the place
getting in the way and distracting your henchmen, and random lightning bolts will damage your
buildings and kill your units.

It's depressing to try and write a walkthrough and say something like you'll need a good
amount of luck on your side to win, but there you go.  You'll need some luck.  You could use a
good strategy five times and only have it work once (or at least that's my experience).  If
lightning bolts keep killing your peasants and tax collectors, if your starting heroes decide
to run instead of fight, if spiders swarm on two sides of your base and all your heroes go to
only one side, then you're probably going to lose.  Luckily, when you lose, you'll tend to
lose early, and so you can start again without investing too much time in a lost effort.

But, anyway, when you start the mission you'll have a base in the center of the map with a
couple dozen houses surrounding it.  Several minotaurs and a cyclops will already be at your
houses, wailing away at them as they head towards your palace.  Fortunately, you'll start out
with two level 50 heroes, a warrior and a wizard, and they'll usually head straight for the
attackers even if you don't set any bounty flags on them.  If you can find the wizard early
enough, it's not a bad idea to make him invisible so he'll stay in battle longer before
fleeing.

While your heroes are off defending the realm, you'll need to do three things:

1. Start training heroes at your three existing guilds.  Usually I'd wait for a library before
training wizards, but in this case the only enemies your wizards will really be useful against
are the spiders you'll see in the second wave.  Most of the other enemies you'll face will
either be highly magic resistant or have the magic mirror spell.  So get some wizards training
early, and keep all of your guilds full.

2. Start building your base.  This will be tricky because of all the houses, and so you
probably won't be able to place buildings in a circle around your palace.  My best suggestion
is to go for your economy first by putting down three marketplaces.  Only upgrade one of the
marketplaces to level three unless you find that one of the others really needs the extra hit
points.  Then you can add in a rogue guild so your rogues can help you explore the map and a
second warrior guild for defense.  Later you can add things like a library and a blacksmith
and at least one inn (so you'll get a fountain), plus a guardhouse or two to guard against
sewer entrances and to protect your marketplaces.

3. Figure out how you want to deal with all of the houses.  It's a pain to go through them all
and take them off your repair and tax routes, but that's probably the best plan.  Certainly
you should take them off the repair route so your peasants will concentrate on building your
base, but it's difficult to ignore the money the houses will generate since you'll need so
much during the quest.  You could always compromise and leave the closest homes on your tax
route and then use extortion to get the gold from the rest (but only when your marketplaces
are empty).  Regardless, you'll also need to select all of your tax collectors and change
their minimum pick-up amount to something more substantial, like 500 gold, so they won't waste
time on houses and inns when your marketplaces are stockpiling gold.

You probably won't be able to get all of the above done before the second wave of attacks
arrives in the middle of Day 2, but keep working at it.  The second wave will feature the
witch king and three evil occuli, and they'll show up on the map when they arrive (plus the
king will taunt you).  None of the four will attack your base, so you'll have to go out and
get them.  It's especially important to kill the king because he'll continually spawn spiders,
and the spiders, while wimpy alone, will take down buildings quickly if they're allowed to
swarm.  They're especially dangerous to any outposts you've managed to find because those will
tend to be lightly guarded, if guarded at all.

The best way to kill the witch king is to set a huge bounty on his head and hope for the best.
The king will use the magic mirror spell, and so your level 50 wizard will be useless against
him, but your level 50 warrior will be able to do the job.  So try to get him interested, and
also try to get your other units involved by setting some attack flags on any spiders that are
nearby.  They might attack the spiders and then stick around to help with the king.  Or maybe
not.  For me the witch king is the most difficult creature in the quest to kill, and I never
get him until about the fourth wave.

Meanwhile, try to get your rangers and thieves to explore the map, and as soon as you find a
temple to dauros or a temple to fervus, immediately go up to three warrior guilds and start
training paladins or warriors of discord.  You might lose the temples, especially if the witch
king is still around, and so you need to take advantage of them as quickly as possible.  And
if you find the dwarven settlement, place a trading post next to it.  The settlement will be
able to protect the trading post from most attacks.

After six and a half days, three black phantoms will appear.  Phantoms aren't any fun at all.
They're resistant to magic and they have a nasty fire attack.  The best way to kill them is
through ballista towers as the phantoms chase your fleeing heroes back to your base.  If you
haven't found the dwarves yet, then you'll just have to muddle through the wave by sending
lots of heroes at the phantoms and hoping for the best.  If you happen to fight them within
your wizard spell range, you can try casting anti-magic shield on the hero you least want to
die, and that might give it a fighting chance.

After eleven and a half days, the next attack will come.  This one should be relatively easy
with only the liche queen and several vampires.  Put a big bounty on the queen's head to draw
your level 50 heroes, and also put bounties on some of the skeletons the queen creates so your
lesser heroes will help out as well.  Then just pay attention to the combat and heal your
heroes as necessary.

The next wave will come on Day 16 (unannounced), and it will bring back your old friends, the
black phantoms.  There will be three of them again, and they'll have a fire-breathing lizard
name Rrongol the Hunter to help them out.  The best way to kill them -- still -- is with
ballista towers.  In fact, after spending the gold necessary to keep your three warrior guilds
full, you should spend your remaining gold on ballista towers.  Just put a lot of them around
your base, and train three gnomes so they can help out with the repairs.

The last wave will feature several dragons, including Vendral, and come after 19.5 days.
There will also be three more black phantoms and Url Shekk.  The more the merrier, right?
Fortunately, the dragons will attack from several different locations, and some will get
distracted by your outposts, while the others will come straight for your base.  If you have
the gold, use lightning storm against the dragons so your heroes can focus on the black
phantoms.  If you've found and filled all of the outposts, you'll probably have over 50 heroes
by this point, and even if you take heavy losses, you should still have the firepower
necessary to defeat the wave.

5.4. The Fertile Plain
----------------------

Objective:

1. Destroy the seven waves of attackers.

My Best Time:

23 days

Walkthrough:

You'll start out with a lot of gold, but you should avoid wasting it.  You'll have three days
before the first wave of attackers hits, and so you can construct your buildings in a cost-
efficient order.  To that end, first build a blacksmith south of your palace.  When it is
complete, put a marketplace next to it, and put two wizard guilds to the left and right of
your palace.  Next build a warrior guild next to one of your wizard guilds (to protect it) and
a temple to dauros next to the other, and start building a library as soon as one of the
wizard guilds completes.

Once the library is complete, you can start researching at your buildings and start training
wizards.  With your remaining money, build another marketplace or two, train paladins and
monks, and upgrade your palace to level three.  You should also upgrade one of your wizard
guilds to level three so you can use lightning storm if things begin to look dicey during any
of the attack waves.

The first wave will occur after three days and feature goblins attacking from the north.
They're quick and can take down a building or two before your heroes can even get there to
intervene.  If you're in danger of losing a building you don't want to lose, cast lightning
storm to wipe the goblins out.  Otherwise, let your heroes do the work so they can gain
experience.

The second wave will occur after six days and feature minotaurs attacking from the south.
Before they arrive, you should place a second warrior guild on the south side of your base and
try to train as many paladins as possible.  Keep some gold handy so that if you really need a
lightning storm, you'll be able to afford it.

The third and forth waves will come quickly, with elves attacking from the east on Day 8 and
dwarves from the west on Day 9.  Both elves and dwarves are easy to kill compared to
minotaurs, and so these two waves should be a walk in the park.  Just try to keep an eye on
your wizards, and cast invisibility if necessary to keep them alive.

You'll have some time to rest, relax, and work on your base again for the next few days.  Be
sure to build a temple to agrela and upgrade it to level three, and also try to add a third
warrior guild.  It never hurts to have extra paladins running around.

The fifth wave will come on Day 15 and have lots of vampires in it.  If you're unlucky, the
vampires will come across your wizards before your paladins, and a few of your wizards will
die due to reflected spells.  If that happens, don't resurrect your wizards right away.  Wait
for the paladins to get to the scene or at least for the vampires to move away so your wizards
won't just go and kill themselves again.  The easiest way to resurrect dead wizards is to
click on the wizard guilds, find the highest level dead wizard in the lists, select it, and
then cast resurrect on the portrait of the wizard on the interface bar.

The sixth wave will come on Day 18 and have minotaurs again, but this time they'll attack from
all four sides.  Set attack flags and use call-to-arms at your warrior guilds (as necessary)
to divide up your heroes so they attack all of the minotaurs, and not just the ones on one or
two sides of your base.  With eight wizards, 10+ paladins, plus maybe some monks and healers
running around, this wave should be relatively painless.

The final wave will come on Day 21.  It'll have a dozen rock golems plus Dirgo the Cyclops
(whoever that is) attacking from all four sides.  Golems have 290 hit points, and they hit
pretty hard, but luckily they're as slow as mud.  They're also susceptible to magic, and this
is where your wizards can shine.  Your wizards will be able to kill everything that attacks in
this wave all by themselves -- as long as there's a paladin or a building or something in
between them and the golems.  And even if your wizards get into melee range with the golems,
all is not lost.  With a ring of protection, wizards can dodge pretty well, and if they have
the meteor swarm spell they can inflict a lot of damage before dying.  Then you can just
resurrect the wizard to let him go at the golem again.

5.5. Slay the Mighty Dragon
---------------------------

Objectives:

1. Find and destroy the hidden sword site.
2. Kill Vendral.

My Best Time:

21 days

Walkthrough:

Vendral will immediately show up on the map and make a beeline for your base.  Don't train any
solarii yet; they'll just get killed.  Instead, start researching at your marketplace and
blacksmith, and take the fairgrounds and marketplace off your tax route (to prevent your tax
collectors from dying and losing gold).

Vendral will meander around your base for a day and a half, damaging buildings and killing
peasants.  Then he'll leave, and you'll have a few days before he comes back.  So get your
base into shape.  Put your buildings back on the tax route, add another marketplace, continue
upgrading and researching, and train four solarii.  Also, place explore flags in a circle
around your base, evenly spaced about one (zoomed out) screen away.  The solarii will explore
on their own, but they're not as enthusiastic about it as rangers, and so you'll need to
encourage them.  They'll sometimes bite on 100-gold explore flags, but usually it takes 200
gold.  Also, don't put down any guardhouses yet, or else your solarii will just garrison
instead of explore.

Eventually, and hopefully quickly, your solarii will stumble upon a group of buildings that
will join your cause.  Chances are, the group will include either a warrior guild or a rogue
guild.  Regardless, train heroes right away since they'll go after explore flags much more
often than your solarii will.  Quickly spread your units across the map until you find other
outposts and the hidden sword site.

After 7.5 days, Vendral will come back, and he'll have some harpies with him.  You can't do
much at this point other than kill the harpies and hope Vendral doesn't kill too many of your
heroes.  When your heroes die, don't replace them because they'll probably just attack Vendral
again and die again.  Vendral will leave after four days, and then you can start training
heroes again.

You can now go back to exploring the map and building up your forces.  Upgrading your palace
is a good idea because Vendral will always go for your palace when he attacks.  You should
also upgrade one or more of your temples so you'll have an offensive spell you can cast
anywhere on the map in case one of your remote buildings comes under attack.  And if you find
the temple to agrela, upgrade it fully so you can keep your heroes alive.

There are two buildings on the map that you'll have to find: the sword site (of course) and
the dwarven settlement.  Once you destroy the sword site, one of your heroes will have to pick
up the sword and take it to the dwarven settlement so the dwarves can duplicate the sword for
all of your heroes.  As soon as your hero picks up the sword and starts heading to see the
dwarves, Vendral will reappear and attack.  He'll arrive with a few dragons, but with your
veteran units, spells to play with, and the powerful heroes that come with some of the
buildings you've found, you shouldn't have much of a problem killing him.  Just set a huge
bounty on his head and watch your heroes rush to take advantage.

5.6. Tomb of the Dragon King
----------------------------

Objectives:

1. Destroy the three lairs, and then
2. Destroy the tomb of the dragon king.

My Best Time:

21 days

Walkthrough:

There are two important things to know about this map before you get started.  The first is
that there will only be three creature lairs on the map, and they will only create dragons.
The quicker you can destroy the lairs, the fewer dragons you'll have to face -- and, more
importantly, the fewer you'll have to face simultaneously.

The second thing to know is that there will be an outpost right next to your base.  This
outpost will always be a (zoomed out) screen or so away, and it will be between your base and
the center of the map.  The nice thing about the outpost is that it will contain a trading
post with 9000 gold in its coffers.  If you can get that gold right away, fending off early
dragon attacks will be much easier.  After you get the gold, the outpost (plus three temples
to krolm located somewhere else on the map) will pretty much be dragon-bait and not worth
protecting.

You'll also need to make a couple of decisions right away.  One is to pick the non-human race
you plan to use.  I could make an argument for all three races: dwarves will give you
settlements and ballista towers, which will be more useful here than normal since you can't
use guard towers; gnomes will help you get your base going and also quickly respond to dragon
attacks by repairing the victim buildings; and elves, as always, will give you more gold.

I picked elves.  The dwarven defensive structures will only slow down dragons, and they'll get
destroyed if even two dragons attack them.  Dragons are also pretty good about attacking
repairers, and that negates much of the usefulness of gnomes.  Elves, on the other hand, never
fail to give you more money, and in this case you can use the extra gold to upgrade your
wizard guild and hit dragons with lightning storms if you need to.  Also, the elven lounge
will make it more likely for your priestesses (and their important skeletons) to stay in your
base, and that will help in defense.

The second decision you'll need to make is what to do with your starting ranger guild.  It's
all by itself, usually on the other side of the map, and if you leave it alone a dragon will
come by and destroy it after a couple days (taking any rangers you trained with it since the
rangers will try to defend their home).  If you move the guild, it will cost you 800 gold.  If
you wait for it to be destroyed and then build a new one, it will only cost you 700 (or less)
gold.  So it is cheaper -- and better, I think -- to let the ranger guild go.  If you train
rangers right away, they might find a lair for you, but they might also find the temples to
krolm, and you don't want them to do that.  Priestesses and warriors of discord will be your
main fighting units for this quest, and temples of krolm will prevent you from being able to
build their temples.

So with all of the above in mind, here's how to begin the quest.  Train four priestesses.
Skeletons are an excellent defense against dragons, and the more you have, the better.  While
that is going on, build a rogue guild so you can train a rogue and send it out to find the
outpost.  Then build a marketplace, an inn, and finally, as soon as possible, upgrade your
palace to level two.  That will allow you to bring elves into your kingdom.

About this time you should get your 9000 gold.  So build an elven bungalow and put up two more
marketplaces.  Then, as your resources allow it, build another temple to krypta, a warrior
guild (at the front of your base), and a temple to fervus.  Also upgrade your buildings where
possible.  Bring all your markets to level two just so they'll have more hitpoints.

One dragon will appear on the map at the end of the second day.  It will first attack your
ranger guild, and, if you've discovered your outpost by then, it will attack the outpost next.
Between the two you should have more than enough time to train four (and possibly more)
priestesses.  They should be able to kill the dragon before it can destroy any of your
buildings.

Another dragon will appear on around the fourth day, and it should be as easy to kill as the
first.  The real problem will come at the end of the first week when five or so dragons will
descend upon your base.  It's definitely a good idea to have eight priestesses by then, and if
you can throw out some warriors of discord, even better.

Early in the game you might also be attacked by three vampires.  They start out at the
location where the dragon king tomb will eventually appear, but sometimes they wander over to
your base.  If that happens, put a bounty on their heads, and between your skeletons and
greedy rogues, you should be able to swarm and kill them.

Once you survive the dragon attack at the end of the first week, build a ranger guild and get
your rangers exploring.  You might even want to put some explore flags out at the far reaches
of the map to get your rogues and elves into the act as well.  Eventually they'll find the
three lairs.  If you're flush with gold, start training units that will go for reward flags
(rogues, of course, but also warriors and wizards), and set about 500 gold bounties on each
lair.

Each time you destroy a lair, some creatures will appear.  The evil castle will produce
medusas, the dark castle will produce werewolves, and the ruined keep will produce dragons.
The important thing to note is that when you destroy the last lair, not only will the dragon
king tomb appear, but a few dragons will appear with it.  So you don't want to destroy the
ruined keep last, or else you'll have to fight about ten dragons at once.

Once you destroy the three lairs and kill the dragons, the mission will essentially be over.
The tomb will produce a dragon every so often, but that's all you'll have to fight.  So just
pour all of your gold into an attack flag on the tomb, and get all your heroes to the scene to
finish off the tomb as quickly as possible.

5.7. Vengeance of the Liche Queen
---------------------------------

Objective:

1. Find and kill the liche queen.

My Best Time:

27 days

Walkthrough:

You'll start out with a pair of temples to agrela flanking your palace.  Build a marketplace
and train two healers at each temple.  When you have four healers, upgrade your palace to
level two.  Then get to work on a warrior guild and a temple to dauros.  At the same time,
place a wizard guild and then build a library.  Build one more marketplace, and upgrade both
to level two, and then devote the rest of your gold (as you get it) to training paladins until
you have a full warrior guild.

The undead on the map won't really pay you much attention.  Every so often the liche queen
will taunt you, and this seems to be the announcement of a skeleton / vampire raid.  But it's
hard to tell.  The undead move so slowly that they might not arrive until a day or so after
the taunt.  In any case, be prepared.

Once you have your paladins, build a ranger guild and train four rangers to explore the map.
There will be three outposts you can find: one with a rogue guild, blacksmith, and inn; a
second with a warrior guild and inn; and a third with a dwarven settlement, ballista tower,
and inn.  I've listed them in the order you're likely to find them.  The dwarven outpost in
particular will usually be the farthest away.

When you find the blacksmith, be sure to guard it.  Putting a warrior guild next to it is a
good idea, and a guardhouse or two wouldn't hurt, either.  Also, as long as you don't find the
dwarven outpost first, you can bring elves (after finding an inn) or gnomes into your kingdom,
and then find the dwarves and have them as well.  Elves will be more useful than gnomes in
this quest because the pace will be slow, and you might have to spend a lot of money on
warrior guilds and paladins.

As your rangers uncover the map, let your paladins destroy any lairs that become visible.
Eventually, on the other side of the map, you'll find the liche queen's tower.  It should be
easy to spot.  There will be lots of skeletons and vampires and two graveyards nearby.  If you
built a warrior guild at your main base, found another at an outpost, and built a third next
to the blacksmith, put a huge bounty on the queen's tower to get all twelve of your paladins
involved.  When they destroy the tower, the liche queen will appear, plus a few of her vampire
friends.  Your lower level heroes will probably run away, but as long as a few of your
paladins stay you should be able to kill the vampires and queen easily.  But if you have
trouble, feel free to construct some ballista towers around the tower before attacking it so
you'll have some extra help.


*********************************
* 6. MAJESTY NE ADVANCED QUESTS *
*********************************

6.1. The Clash of Empires
-------------------------

Objective:

1. Destroy the goblin and ratman lairs.

My Best Time:

16 days

Walkthrough:

You won't come under attack for 2-3 days, so you'll have time to set up your base.  In fact,
you'll have enough time so that you can flag and destroy the temple to fervus and go with
another set of temples if you feel so inclined.  If you decide to destroy the temple to
fervus, build a rogue guild right away, put a 100 coin bounty on the temple, and then train
four rogues.  They'll remove the temple quickly.

Set up three marketplaces early in the mission but only upgrade one to level three.  Build a
ranger guild so your rangers will locate nearby lairs.  Put up a warrior guild next to one of
the marketplaces to help defend it.  Also build a couple of guardhouses, but wait until you
see where the first sewer entrance pops up.

Then it's just a matter of search and destroy.  Keep creating guilds and heroes, and flag
lairs when you come across them.  Ratmen and goblins aren't very tough, and whichever temple
group you decide to go with should be able to handle them easily.  I had the best luck using
the temple to krolm.  With lots of gold coming in from the three marketplaces (plus elves), I
put up four temples to krolm, and with 24 barbarians plus rage-of-krolm every couple minutes,
the ratmen and goblins didn't stand a chance.

6.2. The Fortress of Ixmil
--------------------------

Objective:

1. Destroy Ixmil's fortress.

My Best Time:

49 days

Walkthrough:

You'll have three or four days before you come under attack, so I think the best strategy is
to get your economy going first, and then worry about your heroes.  So put down three
marketplaces around your palace, and add a couple of guardhouses for defense.  If you still
have room next to your palace, place some inns to make sure no sewer entrances appear there.
Then, as your gold allows, build a warrior guild and a temple to dauros and start training
paladins.

Every time the fortress appears, you'll get an audio cue (that sounds like a spaceship) and
the fortress will show up on the map even if it's in an area you haven't explored yet.  The
fortress will be surrounded by poisonous plants and daemonwood, so even if you flag it the
first time you see it, your heroes will run away.  Plus, the fortress will defend itself with
magical attacks (like a wizard tower).  So wait until you have some mid- to high-level
paladins before you make a concerted effort to attack the fortress.

Also, every time the fortress appears, it'll release a wave of creatures.  These can range
from undead to ratmen to minotaurs to dragons.  I think the dragons only appear later in the
quest, but you might see a couple of vampires right off the bat.  Early in the mission you'll
have to rely on your guardhouses because vampires will kill just about everything else (which
is another reason to focus on your economy early).

Then it's just a matter of building and upgrading, adding heroes as you can and giving them
things to buy.  You probably won't be able to destroy the fortress until well after you're
capable of destroying it.  The fortress won't stay on the map very long, and it'll keep
creating creatures for your heroes to fight through to get to it.  Plus, every time the
fortress leaves it'll gain 250 hit points back.  But just keep at it, and eventually you'll
destroy it.  You might want to consider building and upgrading a sorcerer's abode so you can
either earthquake the fortress when you see it (for about 80 points of damage) or use the gate
spell to get your heroes to the fortress more quickly.

6.3. Rise of the Ratmen
-----------------------

Objectives:

1. Kill Rhoden, the ratman king.
2. Destroy all broken sewer mains.

My Best Time:

25 days

Walkthrough:

You'll always start with at least two sewer entrances next to your palace, so don't bother
restarting the quest hoping for a better situation.  You'll also start out with buildings all
over the place on the map.  So the first thing you should do is take everything that isn't
especially close to your palace off the repair and tax routes.  Then start training rangers
and upgrading your marketplace while building a rogue guild.

You'll be under constant attack from rats during the quest.  The numerous sewer entrances will
see to that, and groups of rat shamans, rat champions, and ratapults will also appear from
time to time.  Try your best to keep expanding your base.  Add a warrior guild and temple to
dauros as quickly as possible, and upgrade your marketplace to level three so you'll get the
full benefit of the caravans that will come in.

Speaking of caravans, try to keep at least one of the trading posts around (especially the one
next to the level two blacksmith).  Pick the one that you want to defend and put your warrior
guild next to it.  You might also want to put a guardhouse or two nearby for extra protection.
The trading post is important.  With it and elves, you won't need to build another
marketplace.

Let your rangers explore the map while your paladins and monks stay near your base.  You might
also want to use guardhouses for extra defense.  If you do use them, put them down in pairs
(at least).  Solitary guardhouses will get swarmed and destroyed by the rats, but pairs (or
triplets) will sometimes have a chance.  However, you can probably get away with not having
guardhouses if you put buildings with lots of hit points on the perimeter, and let those
buildings plus houses distract the rats while your paladins and monks kill them off.

When you've destroyed all of the sewer mains, Rhoden won't necessarily appear.  I'm not sure
if he'll wait a few days first or if it's just predefined that he'll appear on Day 25.  I
cleared the map by Day 20 and then had several days to accumulate gold before he showed up.
So when Rhoden finally did make his appearance on Day 25 it was simplicity itself to wipe him
and his entourage out with wizard spells.

If you don't have the luxury of wizard spells, then the final battle will be a little more
exciting.  Rhoden will appear with about three groups of rats, and they'll all attack from
different directions.  So let your paladins and monks do their job as best they can, and
remember that it doesn't matter if the rats destroy a large portion of your base.  You just
have to kill Rhoden and the sewer mains that appear when he does, and you'll win the quest.

6.4. Trade Routes
-----------------

Objective:

1. Protect at least half of the caravans over a 31-day period.

My Best Time:

31 days

Walkthrough:

You'll start out with two warriors and a ranger, so quickly train a thief so you can upgrade
your palace to level two.  Also quickly start upgrading and researching at your marketplace.
It's the only one you'll get for this quest, and numerous caravans will be visiting it, so
it'll pay off to get it to level three right away.

With the rest of your money, build a ranger guild and then train rangers and thieves.  After
about two days, you'll be attacked by several goblins and enemy thieves.  Low level warriors
will tend to run away, but rangers and thieves will stay and fight, and they'll usually be
able to drive off the attack without anything major being destroyed.  Once the attack is over,
place a warrior guild near your marketplace, and put down a couple of guardhouses for defense.
Most of the attacks on your base will be from wimpy creatures like thieves and goblins, and
guardhouses will actually be useful in that case.

Over the 31 days of the quest, you'll periodically see a caravan approach your base.  There
isn't much you can do early in the quest, but after a few days you should try to explore the
map and clear the four trade routes.  Don't worry about lone creature lairs, but definitely
flag things like goblin towers and daemonwood trees if they're near a route.  Also try to get
a temple to agrela up quickly.  You can heal caravans just like any other unit, and since
enemy creatures won't focus on the caravans, you can usually pamper them with heals to make
sure they get to your base.

Every few days, some random bad event will occur.  These can be things like several barbarians
attacking your base or a ``magical accident'' at your palace (which will throw fireballs at
your heroes and henchmen) or the appearance of more daemonwood or poisonous flowers on the
map.  Just keep the routes clear and don't worry about the rest.  You'll only need to get 15
of the 30 caravans to your marketplace to win.

6.5. Urban Renewal
------------------

Objective:

1. Destroy all Red guilds, lounges, and gambling halls.

My Best Time:

27 days

Walkthrough:

This is a difficult mission to start out.  If you don't flag any of the Red buildings, Red
will essentially be your ally and leave you alone.  But the Red units will also use your shops
to grow stronger, and the Red rogues might steal from your buildings.  If you do flag one or
more Red buildings, then Red will attack you after two days, and it'll send several rogues and
elves your way.  If they can get to your tax collectors, then the quest will be over.  You
won't be able to make any gold and Red will keep chipping away until you lose.

So what you need to do is build some guardhouses.  If there isn't enough room between your
palace and the Red buildings, then restart the quest until there is room.  Then add a second
marketplace, and protect both marketplaces as well as the paths your tax collectors are likely
to take with four or five guardhouses.  Elves and rogues will run away from guardhouses
upgraded with arrows, and so the guardhouses will give you some breathing space.

Once the guardhouses are up, build a blacksmith, warrior guild, and temple to dauros.
Barbarians won't work well in this quest because they won't buy potions, and ranged attackers
(with poisoned weapons) will just pick them apart.  Priestesses might be a good choice because
skeletons are good at dodging, but I didn't try them.  Paladins can mow down rogues and elves
pretty easily, and that's what I used.

Once you upgrade your blacksmith to level three, also add in dwarves.  Put their settlement at
the most vulnerable point in your base, and then train three dwarves to help out the paladins.
Also build a temple to agrela at some point so you can heal, but don't worry about upgrading
it.  It takes quite a few rogues and elves to seriously damage a paladin.  As long as you keep
half an eye on them you should never need to resurrect them, and so a level one temple to
agrela should be enough.

Once you have four paladins and once your base is secure, the quest will be just about
finished.  All you'll have to do is track down the Red buildings and destroy them, fighting
lots of rogues and elves along the way.  Red will have a couple dozen buildings, so it'll take
a while.  You might want to build a ranger guild and train some rangers so they'll help you
uncover the map.  Also note that Red will have a couple of warriors and barbarians hidden in
some buildings, but once they're ousted they'll head straight for your base where your
defenses or paladins should be able to kill them easily.


*******************************
* 7. MAJESTY NE EXPERT QUESTS *
*******************************

7.1. Darkness Falls
-------------------

Objective:

1. Destroy the wights Styx and Stones.

My Best Time:

16 days

Walkthrough:

This isn't really an expert quest.  It's barely even an advanced quest.  All you have to do is
kill Styx and Stones within about a day of each other, and you'll win.  That might be
difficult if it was difficult to get to Styx and Stones, or if Styx and Stones were difficult
to kill, but it's not and they're not.  So if you've been struggling with the other expert
quests, here's one you can finish in less than an hour.

You'll start out with a warrior guild, but don't train any warriors yet.  You won't come under
attack for a while, so you can work on your economy first.  So build a marketplace and then a
ranger guild.  Then while you're training four rangers, add a second marketplace and finally
upgrade your palace to level two.  Now you can add a temple to dauros and begin training
paladins.  During this time a vampire might wander into your base, but a single paladin should
be able to kill it, and it'll be even easier if a ranger or guardhouse helps out.

Continue to expand your base.  Add an inn and an elven bungalow to increase your money flow.
Then, as your gold allows, add a temple to agrela, add and upgrade a blacksmith, and upgrade
one of your marketplaces far enough to get rings of protection.  Then add a second warrior
guild and train more paladins.  If you're running short on gold, realize that you don't need
to train monks or healers, since they won't help very much.

On the map you'll find several ancient graveyards, which will spawn some undead creatures
every so often.  Feel free to ignore them.  The worst thing they'll produce is a vampire, and
those should be easy for your paladins to kill.  What you'll have to watch for are two archaic
tombs.  Each tomb will house a wight, and once your destroy the tomb, the wight will start
wandering the map.

Now the wights aren't very difficult to kill.  They'll each have 250 hit points, but their
defensive and resistance ratings won't be overly high, so a single paladin should be able to
kill a wight given enough time.  That means you don't really have to worry about coordinating
attacks against the two archaic tombs and the two wights.  If you have to kill one of the
wights a couple of times, it's no big problem.

So let your paladins kill some undead for a while to boost their levels, and then target one
of the archaic tombs.  Once the tomb is gone, put a hefty bounty (1000 gold should be enough)
on the wight, and let your paladins get to work.  You might also want to build a wizard guild
since wizards are pretty good about going after bounties, and they'll be able to deal out a
lot of damage while hiding behind your paladins.

Then repeat with the second tomb, and go back and kill the first wight again if you need to.
The only other thing you might have to worry about are herds of shadowbeasts that will appear
on the map every so often.  But they'll only have 50 hit points each and just about any of
your heroes should be able to kill them.  Also, goblin towers will appear on the map every so
often, but they'll be on your side making it even easier to defend against the shadowbeasts.

7.2. Legendary Heroes
---------------------

Objective:

1. Destroy all of the ancient barrows within 30 days (with maybe a day or two extra).

My Best Time:

30 days

Walkthrough:

Conceptually, this is not a very difficult quest.  There are six ancient barrows scattered
around the map, and you'll just have to find them and destroy them.  What makes the quest
difficult is that there are lots of high level enemy creatures -- like rock golems, dragons,
and medusae -- roaming around, and while your high level melee heroes can handle them pretty
easily, your explorers can't.  And so your main difficulty will be in exploring the map.

Since you can only house one hero per guild in this quest, your main concern other than
exploration will be in earning gold.  Heroes will be really expensive, especially when you
have to build second and third copies of guilds to bulk up your army.  One way to ease the
pain financially, at least a little, is to use an embassy and an outpost.  These buildings
will still house two and six heroes respectively, and so they'll allow you to gain eight more
heroes for ``only'' about 15,000 gold.  Once you've dropped down one (or perhaps two) of each
guild, go with the embassy and outpost and hope you get something useful.  You can also take
the opportunity to add a trading post with the outpost to generate even more gold.

To start out, train a thief and a solarii, build a second marketplace, and then upgrade your
palace to level two.  Put some 100-200 coin explore flags a small distance away from your base
and hope the rogue bites on them.  Then add a ranger guild for the added exploration, put an
inn somewhere next to your palace, and finally add a third marketplace.  When the elves offer
to join your kingdom, let them.

At this point you'll have to make a decision about which temples you want to use for the
quest.  You can't use barbarians because of the temple to helia, but you'll still have to
choose between paladins and priestesses.  I chose priestesses because they and their skeletons
are useful explorers.  However, paladins are a good choice too because they can kill any of
the high level creatures you'll find on the map.  Regardless, you should also go with a wizard
guild right away.  There's nothing like starting a quest with a high level wizard.

So now we get to the hard part, which is exploring the map.  You can put out explore flags and
hope your rogues and elves will go for them, but usually they'll run into enough enemy
creatures that they won't get very far.  You can also put attack flags on any creatures that
you find hovering around unexplored territory, and sometimes that will work, and sometimes it
won't.  You can also try to expand your wizard spell coverage and use the farseeing spell.
Your best bet, though, is to do all three of those things -- and also get your sorcerer's
abode to level three and use the gate spell.  You can't set the gate to a region on the map
you haven't explored yet, but you can often put it somewhere so your explorers can
``leapfrog'' most of the enemy creatures and find their way to your explore flags.

Each time you destroy a barrow, lots of (mostly bad) things will happen.  For starters, an
earthquake will rock your entire base, damaging all of your buildings and giving your peasants
way too much to do (which is another reason to add an outpost).  Secondly, a large wave of
enemy creatures will suddenly appear on the map.  Sometimes they'll appear far away from your
base giving you time to prepare, and sometimes they'll appear right in the heart of your base.
Thus, it's a good idea to have your wizard guild at level three before you get to, say, the
third barrow.  You probably won't need lightning storm for the first two barrows because the
first one will feature only trolls, which you should be able to kill easily, and the second
will feature medusae, which I've never had appear inside my base.  But the third one will have
minotaurs, and after that you'll get minotaurs, trolls, medusae, and dragons in combination,
and it's definitely a good idea to have spells on your side.

You won't lose the quest if you take over 30 days to destroy the barrows.  After 30 days a
permanent earthquake will start up, and it will destroy your entire base given enough time.
However, you won't actually lose until your palace is destroyed.  So if your peasants keep
repairing your palace, you might be able to survive an extra day or two and finish off a last
barrow.

But even if you do everything right, you still might not win this quest.  A lot depends on the
placement of the barrows.  If they end up on the opposite side of the map, or if your heroes
just don't find them, then you're not going to win.  It took me five or six tries to finally
get past this quest, and even then I didn't win until after time had expired.  So just keep
plugging away.

7.3. The Siege
--------------

Objectives:

1. Destroy Borjin's fortress, or
2. Destroy the caravans supplying Borjin with gold.

My Best Time:

40 days

Walkthrough:

Although there are two possible objectives, only one of them is really feasible -- destroying
Borjin's caravans.  It is next to impossible to defeat an enemy kingdom when that kingdom has
as much gold as Borjin's does.  He'll just keep healing and re-animating his heroes, and it'll
take forever just to make a dent let alone destroy the kingdom.

So you'll need to destroy caravans.  As in Trade Routes, Borjin will have four spots where his
caravans will appear.  Luckily, they'll all be on your side of the map, so all you'll need to
do is guard those four areas and slowly bleed Borjin to death.  To that end, you'll have to go
with dwarves in the quest so you can use their ballista towers.  Once they offer to join the
kingdom, quickly put their dwarven settlement next to the middle of the three guardhouses
between your kingdom and Borjin's.  That'll be a hot spot for the remainder of the quest.

When you start out, first realize that the quest is going to take a while, so plan ahead by
building three marketplaces, plus some inns to protect the edges of your palace.  Later you
should add trading posts to some of the remote areas you'll have to guard because of the enemy
caravans, so only upgrade the marketplaces likely to receive your own caravans.  Then upgrade
all of your guardhouses to shoot arrows, but don't upgrade them to level two unless you really
want to.

Since you're mostly going to be chasing caravans rather than attacking enemy units and
buildings, go with rangers and rogues first, and be sure to upgrade the rogue guild to level
two so your ranged attackers will have poison on their side.  Ballista towers, guardhouses and
the dwarven settlement will pretty much stop the enemy heroes.  They'll see your defenses and
run away.  So don't worry about things like paladins and healers until later.

Every time you see a caravan, note its position.  The caravans will head straight for the
enemy marketplace, and so some starting positions you can ignore because the caravans will
head straight through your existing defenses.  But realize that the enemy caravans will have
80 hit points instead of 40, and that Borjin will heal his caravans if they get in trouble.
So you won't be able to rely completely on defensive structures to do the job.  Thus, every
time you see a caravan, flag it for 200 gold and let your rangers and rogues go to work.
Between their attacks, poison, and defensive structures, you should be able to kill the
caravans despite the occasional heal spell.  But be sure to remove the attack flag if the
caravan looks like it's going to get away.  You don't want your heroes wandering into Borjin's
kingdom.

Another thing to note about the quest is that you can't build a temple to helia.  That means
your only offensive spell will be chain lightning.  So once the enemy heroes start to become a
nuisance, be sure to build a magic bazaar and then a sorcerer's abode so you can get the
spell.  But don't use it lightly, and don't use it on enemy warriors and elves (since it won't
do much damage).  Instead, save it to kill priestesses, wizards, and henchmen.

Once you find the four starting points for the caravans, and once you put up some ballista
towers, it'll just be a matter of perseverance.  With three marketplaces and a couple trading
posts, you should be rolling in gold.  So go crazy with the ballista towers to make sure no
enemy caravans get through.  Upgrade your palace to level three, and add an outpost so you'll
have extra peasants for the building.  Also add in extra rogue and ranger guilds so you'll
have plenty of heroes to hunt down the caravans.

Eventually, you might even want to attack Borjin's kingdom -- not to destroy it but to
accelerate his spending of gold.  So when you can afford it, add a temple to dauros and
another warrior guild, and then start training paladins, monks, and dwarves.  They'll probably
end up attacking the enemy kingdom even if you don't flag anything.  Between their attacks
(forcing heals and re-animations), chain lighting spells on enemy tax collectors, and the
destruction of enemy caravans, eventually Borjin will run out of gold and you'll win the
quest.

7.4. The Valley of the Serpents
-------------------------------

Objectives:

1. Destroy the snake pits.
2. Keep at least one elven bungalow from being destroyed.

My Best Time:

19 days

Walkthrough:

This is a difficult quest to start, but a relatively easy one to finish.  Your base will be at
one side of the map, and a lone elven bungalow will be at the other.  You'll have to protect
the bungalow, but you'll only need to do so for about five days.  After that the elves will
build a couple more bungalows right next to your base.

About two days into the quest, some elves will join your kingdom and head straight for an inn
to hide.  About a day after that, more elves will arrive, but this time they'll be followed by
about ten medusae.  The medusae will chase the elves until they kill them, and then they'll
head straight for the bungalow.

So your first job will be to protect the bungalow from that initial attack.  The obvious ways
to do this don't seem to work very well.  If you try to build a warrior guild and some
guardhouses near the bungalow, it'll take too long (even if you cast winged feet on your
peasants) and you'll have two bases, which is always annoying.  And some medusae might just
wander over and kill your peasants while they're building.  If you try to place a wizard guild
and some wizard towers near the bungalow, the towers will only distract a couple of the
medusae while the others destroy the bungalow.  And if you upgrade your wizard guild all the
way to level three so you can cast lightning storm, it'll be expensive and might not even work
since medusae have such a high resistance.

So the way to protect the bungalow -- and this is going to sound odd -- is to do nothing at
all.  The medusae will head straight for the bungalow, but they're bloodthirsty little devils,
and if you can get some heroes between them and their target destination, they'll stop and
fight.  So how do you get your heroes to the right spot at the right time?  There are two
ways.  The expensive way is to use the gate spell.  Since you'll start with a level three
sorcerer's abode, this is fairly easy to do.  Just wait for the medusae to arrive and then set
a target between them and the bungalow.  The cheaper way is to set an attack flag on one of
the snake pits on the map.  The medusae will come from the exact same spot as the first elf
group, so if you target a snake pit between that position and the bungalow, your heroes will
be in the way without even realizing it.  Then you'll just need to remove the flag on the pit
and set a couple of flags on the medusae and watch your paladins get to work.

Since you'll have about three days before the initial attack, you can start out by setting up
your economy.  To that end, first upgrade your palace to level two and then build two
marketplaces near your palace.  Because you'll have elves already, the marketplaces will
generate a good amount of money, and you won't have to build any more.  Then build two warrior
guilds and a temple to dauros and start cranking out paladins.  You should be able to train
between six and eight paladins before the medusae attack.

Once you withstand the initial attack, build a rogue guild and a ranger guild, and upgrade the
rogue guild to level two.  You'll have to set a lot of attack flags on a lot of snake pits
before you're done, and your rogues and elves will do a surprisingly good job of destroying
the pits for you.  Then, as your gold allows, upgrade one of your marketplaces to level three,
build and upgrade a blacksmith, and build and upgrade a wizard guild.  Your heroes will come
into a lot of money before the quest is over, so it's a good idea to give them things to buy.

Once the elves place a couple bungalows near your base, forget about the initial bungalow and
pick one of the new ones to protect.  Your most dangerous enemy from this point on won't be
the medusae, but instead will be the ice dragons that will show up every so often.  They'll
have a high defense rating but a poor resistance, so you can use wizard towers to defend the
bungalow.  Also, try to keep some gold around so you can cast lightning storm.  The dragons
will stay conveniently bunched up, making the spell effective.

Then it's just a matter of destroying the snake pits.  Simply flag a couple of pits, let your
rogues, elves and paladins go to work, and then repeat as necessary.  You should be able to
destroy the pits faster than they spawn.  Meanwhile, keep expanding your base and adding more
heroes so you can finish the quest more quickly.  Eventually you'll receive groups of gnomes
and dwarves to help out, and it should be smooth sailing from that point on.


*******************************
* 8. MAJESTY NE MASTER QUESTS *
*******************************


**************************
* 9. DOWNLOADABLE QUESTS *
**************************

9.1. The Wrath of Krolm
-----------------------

Objectives:

1. Destroy all altars to krolm, or
2. Kill the avatar of krolm

My Best Time:

68 days (ouch!)

Walkthrough:

This is a quest where starting out can be difficult.  You'll only have two days before
werewolves, barbarians, and more start paying you regular visits.  Plus, you won't start out
with a lot of gold, and you'll never make a lot of gold, so you'll have to plan carefully.

So here's what to do: build a guardhouse, train four thieves, upgrade your palace, and then
build another guardhouse.  You should put the guardhouses near your marketplace or sewer
entrances or both, and you should also place them so they extend your view towards the center
of the map.  The reason why guardhouses are useful here is because you won't have time to
build a warrior guild and train a warrior and have that warrior buy potions before the enemy
units arrive.  You could build a ranger guild in time, but rangers won't be all that helpful
against the creatures you'll be facing.  And so the guardhouses will help you get through the
initial battles, and they'll be useful for your interior defenses as well.

Then build a warrior guild at the outer edge of your base so that it is nearest to the center
of the map.  The idea here is that the warrior guild will end up being the focus of most enemy
attacks, and with its 800 hit points plus the call-to-arms option, it should always survive.
Around the rest of the perimeter place a temple to dauros, a temple to agrela, and a wizard
guild.  You should build the temple to dauros first so you can start training paladins, and
the wizard guild should go next to the warrior guild so it can give you good spell coverage
over your base.  Eventually you'll want to bring the wizard guild to level three so you can
cast lightning storm.

In the interior of your base you should put a library and a blacksmith.  When those and your
perimeter buildings are in place, then you should build an elven bungalow.  Money will be your
primary need in this quest, and the elves will help with that.  By building the bungalow last,
you'll force the elven lounge and gambling hall to sprout up outside your perimeter and act as
a buffer when attacks come.

While you are building up your base, you should try to do some exploring.  There are six
altars to krolm on the map, plus a host of creature lairs.  Each time you destroy a creature
lair, creatures (usually evil occuli) will appear.  Each time you destroy an altar to krolm,
an avatar of krolm will appear.  He'll be huge (4000 hit points the first time you see him but
fewer after that), he'll summon a bunch of fairly wimpy creatures (such as harpies and wolves)
every few minutes, and he'll invoke rage-of-krolm.  Luckily, he'll leave after he suffers
enough damage, so get your paladins after him and watch the combat so you can heal as needed.
Also, each time he summons creatures, they'll start out in a bunch, and that's when you should
hit them with a lightning storm spell.  Since the creatures won't have many hit points, one
storm should either kill them outright or severely wound them making them easier kills for
your other units.

Once you destroy all six altars to krolm, the mission will end.  If you're organized, the
trick to the mission is to destroy multiple altars at once.  Then you can skip some
appearances by the avatar and save some time and grief.  However, this strategy is difficult
(or perhaps impossible) with paladins since they'll go out and attack lairs on their own, and
you'll only have so much money to call them back with call-to-arms.


***********************
* 10. VERSION HISTORY *
***********************

Version 1.3
-----------

Submitted:

April 10, 2001

Notes:

Added the remaining two advanced Majesty NE quest walkthroughs.
Added the four expert Majesty NE quest walkthroughs.
Added a table of contents.

Version 1.2
-----------

Submitted:

April 7, 2001

Notes:

Added a technical note regarding Majesty NE.
Updated the money gameplay tip to include trading posts.
Set up the document to support Majesty NE.
Added three advanced Majesty NE quest walkthroughs.

Version 1.1
-----------

Submitted:

February 17, 2001

Notes:

Fixed some doc-to-txt tabbing ugliness.

Version 1.0
-----------

Submitted:

February 16, 2001

Notes:

This is the initial version.  It contains walkthroughs for the advanced and expert quests
included with Majesty FKS as well as a walkthrough for the downloadable quest ``The Wrath of
Krolm.''


*******************************
* 11. PERMISSIONS AND UPDATES *
*******************************

This guide may be posted on any web site as long as the text is not changed and as long as I
am informed of the posting.  I will always submit new versions to GameFAQs (www.gamefaqs.com)
first, so if you are looking for the most up-to-date version of this guide, that is the place
to look.


*****
Copyright © 2001 by Steven W. Carter