Heroes 3 Town Rankings - Rampart

Hello, my friends, and welcome to the grand town ranking series for Heroes of Might and Magic 3. This time we are diving into the Rampart faction. We're going to be scoring the Rampart on its overall virtue from the absolute bottom up using the ingredients that you can see here in front of us. We've got the creatures of the town, the heroes, unique buildings, and some of the most powerful stuff uh at the top of the order, as we'll see later on in the video. Now, this is the second video in the series. I've already done the castle, and you can check that out on the channel, as well. You don't necessarily have to watch them in order. Let's get straight into it, shall we? I started last time with creatures. I think that worked well. Um so, I'd like to begin here with the centaurs and the centaur captains. They're They're functionally good. They're one of the better tier one unupgraded units. If you are going to run around for the first couple of weeks using centaurs without upgrading them, there might be a good reason why you might do that. I think um for the basic centaur, it's an acceptable tier one starting creature. And the ranking I've got in mind for anything in this category is this second level here, this second tier just below bronze. Reasonable creature though, the centaur. The centaur captains are really significant upgrade. We jump to movement eight. You get 10 HP. These can actually be really formidable if you can get up to 100 or 200 of these. Uh I think they are a reasonably uh strong priority, as well, early in the game. They have a nice heavy um punch when they attack, as well. So, I think these guys are pulling their weight and probably can live at this uh bronze level of of virtue for the town. And that's a total of five, obviously, for the centaur and the centaur captain. Next, we have the dwarf and battle dwarf, or dwarves and battle dwarves. Uh I [snorts and clears throat] talked a little bit in the creatures tier list about how I don't really love the basic dwarf, mainly because of the movement. The movement three is just such a punitive setting. I think for this uh purpose, for the purpose of how much does the presence of the basic dwarf help the story of the town? I think they are actually relevant. I think the normal dwarf can just about hang on to that solid two, uh, ranking. What I'm going to call this is the common and dependable slot. The battle dwarf is a really valid upgrade. You go to, um, movement five is key. You also go from 20% resistance to 40% spell resistance, which really can matter. The other key thing about these, the dwarf and the battle dwarf, is that you can choose to build the minor's guild, uh, to sort of pile your gold, pile your effort and resources into getting a big stack of them if you want to do that, which I think allows him to just sneak in to being a bronze level unit for the town. And we come now to the elves, the greatest, uh, unit. Oh my god. Okay, so, I don't want to refer, keep referring back to that creature's tier list too much, but there's certain things I said in that tier list that kind of still ring true. It was a few years ago. The grand elf remains, uh, these few years later, my favorite unit in the entire game. Um, there's something about upgrading, building my homestead here in the right-hand side of the town, and then upgrading it for only a paltry, what is it, 15 wooden 1,500? 10 wooden 1,500 gold is nothing to upgrade to get the dwelling. And then you get these magnificent, uh, combatants. Speed seven, um, high attack, and, uh, I should have I should have the stats handy here. Attack is The attack is nine, defense five, and we're dealing three to five damage, uh, for an average of four. So, that means they can be blessed, um, yeah, but with a natural speed of seven, um, that also really, really adds to their, uh, virtue because of the fact that having high speed on your archery really helps to be able to just get on top of things. Once the combat develops, and you've got bad guys that are in short range or or bearing down on you. It's like, "Oh, oops, hang on. I've got to have my turn first before you move." And lo and behold, bang, two shots straight to the sternum and uh it's lights out. So, grand elves are I'm not as I go putting them near the gold trophy because they're just uh such a magnificent thing to do in the game is to go for grand elves. How does the green elf, as I'll call it, so I can call it wood elf? How does it actually add to the story? What if it didn't exist? What if you couldn't hire them? What if you were forced to look at them and never hire them from the homestead? You were only ever allowed to upgrade them and then hire them. How sad would you be? Not very, right? Because you were always going to do the upgrade anyway. With that said, they are very very nasty in combat even with one shot instead of having the two shots. So, I don't know, maybe it's two even a bit too generous because I'm just I just very rarely fight with them or use them for very long, but I didn't have the fact that they have such incredible big brothers. But, we'll give them this score uh on the same basis that we gave to the castle. And there'll be other units uh in the other factions that have this disease where their big brother is just so so incredible that they just get eclipsed so quickly. So, that's a total of seven points for the elves. Moving swiftly on to these swift units, we have the pegasi and the silver pegasi. I guess I'll just leave them here while I'm talking about them. I don't know why I'm moving them around while I before before we make a decision. Um now, silver pegasi a little bit um expensive in terms of getting the dwelling built. And then, what you get for your money is a very very fast unit with v- pretty good attack skills, uh good attack and defense skills, reasonable damage, has the magic dampening effect, but uh pretty poor HP, right? We're talking 30 HP. And for a tier four unit, that really hurts, right? It can be the case that you're able to get uh a reasonable stack of silver pegasi and the right kind of hero to keep them alive, to really leverage their speed, fly and alpha strike, fly the heck out of there, uh wash, rinse, repeat, uh perhaps using um uh creature-buffing spells, etc. to to to do that. But, I find a better use for silver pegasi is just to buy a few of them, to use them as distractors, kind of like what I like to do with dragonflies, um and to steal the first turn away from the opponent when that might really matter, having access to the first turn. You can be happy enough, I think, uh investing in and going for silver pegasi. Other people in the comments, when I've talked about these creatures before, have said that they I've I'm I'm too pessimistic on these, I'm too bearish on them. But, in my experience, they're just too squishy. And if you go too hard with your money, too too heavily, too quickly, you can be punished. Grand elves, you can be unlucky and your grand elves can get lightning bolted or you can get they can get tagged or destroyed, but they're so cheap. I mean, I I it's the power output of these things relative to how much money you spend. It's like, okay, you're sad if you lose them or if you even lose a few, you're always a bit annoyed. But, the game ca- the game goes on, the game carries on. These These things though, you put your money into these and lose a few and you're really sad. Anyway, spending too long talking about it. The basic pegasus I find to be really junky. She does have the same attack and defense um sorry, damage range profile of five to nine. She's got a smaller uh defense rating. She's only got eight defense rating instead of 10. She does have the magic damper effect, but I just find that there's just no point bu- go- going for pegasus. Like, to actually build the pegasus waterfall, by the time you've done that and bought them, you may as well go on. Like, you you're all in at that point. Like, you've gone you've put quite a lot of money in because the dwelling isn't cheap. You may as well go and get silvers if you're going to do that. These [snorts] guys flying around, they just don't do that good a job. You can't fly over on turn one and tag a ranged unit and take it out of the game the way you can with a silver pegasus. And you can't fly over to your elves and tank and get in the way for them. You're just not well suited to that, right? Use the dwarves for that. Don't use Don't use these. >> [snorts] >> So, I'm going to be quite cruel and I was brutal with the castle faction um where I needed to be. What does the existence of this unit What does the existence of this unit add to the glory of the rampart and to the journey of your destiny as the custodian of this glorious glade? Uh alliteration uh intentional, by the way. Nothing. Brutal. Probably it's something, but I'm rounding it down to nothing. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, and I'm just going to I'm just going to own that. We're on now to the dendroids and the dendroid soldiers. Now, I must remember similar to the dwarves Oh, hang on a minute. I've got some scoring to do before I do that. So, what we'd want to do we want to add two points for the pegasus. Let's do that. Yeah, I was going to say uh I need to call out the fact that there are the dendroid saplings that you can uh invest in for the dendroid guard and the dendroid soldier. You can choose to buy the saplings, which gives you an extra two per week. So, you've got the option. You can either go small or you can go ha- hard, get the saplings and pour even more money in and get a bigger stack of these guys as you go. Now, just to remind us what these do, they're basically a giant version of the dwarf um but much more fearsome and devastating in combat. So, the basic dendroid guard has the same disease of only movement three just like his little buddy. The dendroid soldier goes up to movement four as opposed to movement five for the battle dwarf. Um the jump from movement three to four is massive. It's It's immense. In any open field uh engagement, a movement three unit is just so much less useful to you in terms of option value. If you think about the radius of the the diameter of the shadow around the unit when it's his turn, having the extra hex of movement four over three adds I should probably do the maths one day. What does it add? It adds like 20 extra hexes that he can move to. I don't know if that's an exaggeration. Maybe it's 19. I don't know. It probably is an exaggeration. I should have done the maths beforehand. Anyway, four is much much better than three and then five is quite good upgrade over four and you get a diminishing returns thing that happens as you move up. Um the additional speed points. So anyway, let's start with the Dendroid Soldier. I love this unit and I really depend on it as it's like a signpost for me to get to, especially if I've been bearish on the Pegasi and I haven't bothered putting money in. I've built the dwelling so I can just get on with it. Don't buy any of the I haven't bought any of the Pegasi and I'm quickly wanting to get onto my Dendroid Archers so that I can kind of kind of get to these guys and shore up my armies so that I can have that big beefy HP blob. Other people I think are a little bit less keen on them in the in the comment sections of other videos I've made that you know, maybe aren't as attached [snorts] to them. I just love the sheer HP. It's because of the saplings as well, right? The fact that you can do the hoard dwelling. Um they're a nice money sink and it's they just If someone wants to kill you, they're going to have to go through these guys first and it's just I don't know. It's like a security blanket or something. I just like having them. Now, the fact that the guards exist instead, I think we're probably in the same category of conversation as the basic dwarf. Um so I don't really want to buy them and I certainly don't want to run around the map with them, but the fact that they exist in the town has some utility. Maybe not a great deal. I could be quite mean and put them here. Like I'm not going to buy these and do anything with them. I'm only buying them to block and guard my town which I can do more cheaply and more early with this guy. So, I was going to stack them together, but I actually don't think that's right. I think the existence of this unit, if it didn't exist, I just wouldn't be that sad. If I was stuck waiting and had to put the extra gold into upgrading the dendroid archers into upgraded dendroid archers before I was allowed to get any creatures out of it, and you robbed me of the opportunity to buy this guy, I wouldn't be that sad. I'd be a little bit sad. It I like it it it it it it affects it a little bit, but only a little bit. So, I'm going to let him drop off. Um yeah, I think I'm okay with that. Right. So, we've got a four and a one, that makes five. And we're onto the basic unicorn, which is the tier six unit, the starting level tier six unit, or whatever you want to call it, the unupgraded tier six unit. And I really love the unicorn. I've already moved it up, as you can see here. It's like a psycho um psychological um background thing going on here. Movement seven, you get this excellent kind of uh fighting body, you know, out of the unicorn. It's got um 18 to 22, I believe. Um I don't know why those numbers are in my head. Yeah, 18 to 22 is the damage range. And uh 15 attack, 14 defense, big solid unit, affordable. The dwelling there the unicorn glade is reasonably affordable. They have these lovely upsides of blinding attack and the aura of resistance. And that blind, when it goes off, is just such a delicious upside. Like, being able to blind something. Heroes take whole turns off to cast the spell blind, you know, regularly. It's it's an absolute boutique spell. So, being able to blind something when you either attack or retaliate um is awesome. Now, okay, 20%, you know, it's not 100%, but 20% is is decent. It's it's it matters. It makes a difference. And there's nothing like the gotcha effect of the magic aura um which you can't see. And um any any any neighboring units, for example, if the unicorns are guarding, I don't know, a pack of grand elves, um and someone cast a spell of targeting those elves, you get a 20% chance to um to cancel that spell, which is really, really solid. So, yeah, I love the unicorn. I made a big fuss about it in the creatures tier list. I think it's a silver >> [snorts] >> It's a silver level unit. So, for now, let's give the four points for the unicorn to the score. Just had to take my jumper off there. It's changing from summer to winter here and uh I put the heating on and it's too hot. With that fascinating detail aside, let's move on then to the heroes. Uh before we do that actually, we'll talk about the blacksmith. Now, I as I said before in the previous video, I'm including blacksmiths just because they do different things in different towns. This blacksmith gives you a first aid tent, which is okay. >> [laughter] >> I like first aid tents. I like the discretion to buy them. I like only having to pay 750 gold and it's just a little bit of upside, something you can jump into. Um they're much better The first aid ones are much better than obviously the ammo cart ones. I think I gave the ballista in the castle a bronze. I think it's a bit better. Uh and so I'm going to say that this is just a bog standard uh asset in the town. The fact that you can buy first aid tents is effectively what I'm ranking here. Uh obviously, you don't have any choice but to build the blacksmith. It's more I'm talking about what is the payoff that happens when you uh happen to do that um construction. So, another two points. So, our first hero is Mephala, which is a really cool name and I love her artwork, like the way she's looking out at you, you know, just glaring out at you like, "What?" >> [laughter] >> I'm just bringing up all of the hero um stuff on my other screen here so that I can uh talk a little bit more efficiently and smoothly. Mephala is a pretty good character. So, I supposed to talk about the rangers, I have a hero class rankings um kind of video on the channel where I go through all of the classes in a in a little bit of depth. Haven't gone into individual heroes in as much depth in the past. Mefala is one of the better ones, right? So, she has leadership armorer and then she's a specialist in armorer. That's actually a pretty good combo. Armorer is certainly one of the most powerful skills in the game. And leadership does go quite nicely, I suppose, when you are um planning to have a a creature heavy army uh using a hero of might as of course Mefala is. The ranger's starting profile of 1 3 1 1 is less incredible for me than um other heroes of might, although the kind of armorer and high defense is is a thing uh that might make sense. Her leadership is pretty nice, actually. All of these creatures are living and grateful for having high morale. Uh triple morale on a grand elf, for example, is just happy days. But with Mefala, you might actually be out brawling with unicorns, dendroids, dwarves in the middle of the map. Um and getting use from of that armorer and also getting use of that those those morale flashes. So, I I think Mefala is pretty solid. The fact that she's in the town um putting her hand up saying pick me. Uh you can get something good done with me. I think she does deserve a bronze. Um I'm not as much of a fan of the rangers as I am of the knights that we talked about in the previous video, but talking about what she does and what she's good at. So, yeah. I think it's a solid bronze. I might even put Mefala a high bronze. Mefala, the ranger, she's a good character. She She is a good character. I'm happy to see her in the mage guild. I think she is pulling her weight here. So, let's add three to the score. And next we have Ufretin, the dwarf lord master guy. Ufretin is all about buffing the dwarves and battle dwarves. He makes them more powerful in combat for each level as as he levels up. Uh he also comes with resistance, which is a really interesting skill, particularly in the vanilla game. There is this kind of build where like if you go for the miners guild and you really pile in and buy tons and tons of dwarves, give them to you Freiten, he'll give them all plus one movement right off the bat. He'll also then start to add on to their natural magic resistance that they come naturally with. As he levels up, his resistance will level up as well. So, you can actually try to build something out of this on purpose. He kind of needs to be your main hero though. You need to have that plan in mind at the beginning of the game. If you have two ramparts on your map, depending on what kind of map it is, it might be a bit more viable, right? Or if you've particularly got a dwarf dwelling, I can't believe I said that without messing up. Um, outside your town, if you've got access to extra dwarves early in the game and you go into your tavern and you find this guy, you might be like, "Yeah, let's let's see if we can make this work." Might be quite fun actually getting some movement six battle dwarves out there. Um, [snorts] if you can find a way to haste them, that kind of thing, they love to be, you know, your bless or prayer or all the other cool things you could do. I think in the round he's probably a little bit lackluster. I'd be looking here in this kind of ballpark for him. But I could be persuaded to promote him after. Let's come back to this guy after. Um, and see if we can get him up to what we deem as sort of a solid asset that's going to generally pay dividends for you. I just think he's a bit too situational. So, let's add one to the score for you, Freiten. And next we have Jenova. Jenova is also a druid, 1311. And when I say 1311, I mean attack, defense, spell power, and knowledge. That's kind of just a shorthand way I I like to think of them. Jenova's deal is that she gives you a free 350 gold per day added on to whatever you're doing, no questions asked. She doesn't need to be leveled up. She comes in level one, she'll provide that money. At level 20, she she will still provide that money. She's also got advanced archery um with no extra second skill, which is I never I'm never a big fan of that. I I prefer, generally speaking, unless the skill we're talking about is something preposterous like scouting or logistics or whatever, that it's probably better that she has two basic starting skills that are hopefully both good. So, that wears her down a little bit. I mean, it's obviously she's ready to lead the elves into glorious victory as well. But, as a gold-adding character, you know, I don't really necessarily want to level you up to level 20 like an absolute demigod because you're still just going to be giving me the 350 gold. So, I'm more interested in Genovera as a secondary kind of hero. I love the fact that she's in the town because gold-buffing heroes are massive for me. I made a big fuss about that in the castle video as well. She has a cousin in the castle called Caitlin, and we gave Caitlin a bronze. I think that's where I'd like Genovera to be as well. Um for the fact that she exists, I'm happy when she shows up in the mage guild. I'll often pick her up for that 350 gold ability um regardless of who it is that I need. It's rare though that I'm looking for her to be my main uh hero that I'm really building up into something truly titanic. But, uh a solid score for Genovera. And we're on to Ryland now. And Ryland is the dendroids guy. He makes dendroids better. And for those who've seen the castle video, I've banged on about this for ages. I'm not a big fan, in the vanilla game especially, of heroes that buff tier five creatures. The reason being that if he's your main hero and you've started leveling him up from the beginning of the game, well, he takes a long time for his special ability to matter. By the time it does, you might have already broken the back of the map. And you've had to do all the hard work that comes in the first couple of months using different resources, working around the fact that he's not really giving you enough value. Um con- conversely, if you hire Ryland in week two or week four to help you out with things, what's the probability that you want to give him a huge stack of uh dendroids? Those dendroids are probably busy elsewhere helping your main hero get the job done. So, that's a bit of a problem. With that said, he does have this cool thing where he's got leadership, which I as I said before, I think it's actually a really great skill for the Rangers to have. These creatures are going to be so effective. I mean, Grendel's with leadership going off, I think I just said before, like 5 minutes ago. But, unicorns, all of them love to be love that high morale. Secondly, though, he has diplomacy, and look, diplomacy in the vanilla game is unfair. It's really, really mean. It's really unfair. I think his specialty, though, in dendroids, not that the dendroid is a bad creature, but that the specialty is bad, wears him down a bit. I was going to give him a silver, but I think that I'm just going to say that he drops down into the bronze. I'm happy to see him if I'm playing the vanilla game and I'm intending to abuse diplomacy, which by the way, I would recommend that if you're offered diplomacy to level it up. Um getting free get turning your enemies into um permanent allies on your side is just the most preposterous thing in the vanilla game. It's a three points. And Thorgrim the Ranger is next. Now, he's a really interesting hero, Thorgrim. His specialty is resistance, the resistance skill, and he starts with advanced resistance. So, this guy is kind of doing what you Friton's doing as well. This idea that you could give him dwarves who already have 40% and give them the equivalent of what I don't know, eventually 100% probably um magic resistance. And that sounds really, really fun. Here's the gig, though. Thorgrim can be used with anybody. He doesn't need to be given dwarves. He could be given anyone anyone on this roster. He could be given unicorns, elves, ents. I say ents. Um treemen. What do you What are we calling them again? >> [laughter] >> Uh dendroids. Um the point being that uh it he's just far more flexible um than you Friton. And now, actually contemplating the fact that Thorgrim exists make me makes me want to cement um Thorgrim. Am I getting his name right? No, Ufreten. Who's He's Thorgrim. The fact Thorgrim exists wants me to cement Ufreten's place just down here. Right? He's just okay now that I've seen this guy. I think that's right. Who of the Which of these two do you want? Which would you prefer to see in your tavern? Um Ah, it's got to be Thorgrim, right? It's got to be. Now, is he bronze as well? I didn't think the Rangers would be starting to fill up the bronze tier this much, but they really are, aren't they? I'm sure in PvP there's crazy builds and stuff around Thorgrim um [snorts] that are possible. And uh and so on. For PvE uh especially in the vanilla game, for me it's uh it's two points, a solid entry in the roster. Next we have Ivor the Ranger. Very interesting character this guy. So, his specialty is the elves themselves, right? He has archery as one of his skills, and then he also kind of a little bit annoyingly has offense. Now, it's a bit strange, right? I don't really I it doesn't all completely click together other than the fact that offense is just a pretty good skill on its own anyway. And if you just build a balanced Rampart army with lots of elves in it, uh paired with melee stuff, um unicorns, you've got maybe some centaurs that are still alive if you got battle dwarves, offense is still fine. It's okay. But it doesn't really clickety-click. With that said, he is a specialist in the greatest, you know, uh unit in the game as I'm saying, with [snorts] the grand elves. Um he does need the elves though to be switched on. If he doesn't have the big pack of elves, for example, if you lose uh grand elves, if they take casualties in the mid game, for example, he drops off. Little bit little bit like Valeska, who we talked about in the last video. Uh so, I decided that Veleska didn't deserve to sit next to the marksman at the top of list, and Ivor's kind of got the same problem here. Um his archery as well doesn't have any other application in the rampart other than the elves. So, he's kind of got this weird thing going on where if he has all of his friends with him, his elves, he has offense with his package of skills, which doesn't really gel that well that much. If his friends are missing, if they've all gone home from the party early, he's there at like, you know, 11:00, the music's still thumping, but he's looking around, he's got none of his friends around. Um and he's got a specialty that it buffs all of their uh combat abilities, but there's no one there to hit the dance floor with him. >> [snorts] >> So, I think that wears Ivor down. That said, a ranger is a decent class. They're good secondary skills, and he buffs elves, and elves are amazing. I think he's just a solid entry. Maybe I should give him a little bit more. Uh I'll give him a little bit more up here. So, two points for Ivor. Now, we're on to Clancy. Clancy is a dwarf himself, so he has resistance again uh as the other dwarfs do in the list, um dwarf heroes that is. Now, Clancy's specialty is unicorns. He also has pathfinding, and pathfinding's a really good skill to have. >> [sighs] >> But, I'm sorry, a tier six buffing hero. This is a hero that I just don't get excited about seeing in my magic guild as a uh tier zero. Is is is his presence more harm than good? I don't Probably, yeah. Uh I'm not wishing any particular harm, any specific harm to Clancy, but I don't really want you showing up in the game. >> [laughter] >> And so, for that reason, I am giving you uh a zero. Yeah, happy with that. And we come on now to Kaya, the ranger, and we've certainly saved the best for last. Kaya is a logistics hero who knows logistics also knows archery. She also is a specialist in logistics which means she goes even further than all of the other heroes that have logistics or take it. Now I've talked in other videos about how logistics is the most powerful skill in the game for the vanilla game in particular. What am I looking for in a hero? Um I need a hero. I'm holding out for a hero. This is my hero. This is this is what you this is what where where you want to be. And I'll put it sort of roughly here just to indicate true virtue lies on the left hand side of the scales by the way and it sort of drops off as we move from left to right. But yeah, so Kaya is brilliant. Five points. All right, so it's been if we just stop here and pause for a moment take a step back. It's been a pretty good tail so far. We get to the end we've done all the creatures the basic creatures that is and all the lower tier creatures and we've done all the rangers and if you actually just stop here the picture looks pretty good. It looks like a really good spread of virtue up and down the chain. Some really absolutely boutique units at the top and and Kaya pulling leading the way for the rest of the team but the rest of the team are all hanging out in the bronze and and shield level category. That's a solid solid category. Happy for you to be here and I'm happy happy to put money into the assets that are there on those two tiers as well. Here's where things get a little bit less good. We're on to the not the clerics the druids of the rampart. The druids are the magic casting class. And uh this this class struggles for me. So a druid has two defense as a starting skill as well as two knowledge they've got they've got one spell power which puts them kind of at a slight disadvantage as they're kicking off. It's not necessarily the end of the the two knowledge is more important than two spell power I think in that first week at least anyway. The problem really is that the kind of specialties and the skills that these guys have just don't oh, click that well. Let me tell you let me show you what I mean. Cleric, let me get this right. Druid number one, Coronius. All of the druids have wisdom, okay, like most heroes of magic as one of his skills. His second skill is scholar, so he is able to teach other people. And he almost looks like, doesn't he, a a teacher that has taken hit the students out into the woods and he's just taking pausing for a moment in the woods contemplating what he's about this wisdom he's about to impart to the group. Unfortunately, that wisdom is the slayer spell. And as I said in my spells tier list video, unlike the ban slayer, the spell stinks. >> [sighs] >> Slayer, you're never casting it, almost never in the entire game, like in any run. And his ability to teach it uh to everyone is like so disappointing. You're like you've all sat down cross-legged in the woods looking up at him wistfully waiting to hear the wisdom and [snorts] he unveils the secrets of the slayer spell. Anyway, I'm I'm sitting here um insulting him. He adds nothing to the faction. He's he's terrible. He's one of the worst assets in the entire game, which is such a shame. Look how cool he looks. So, I don't need to pause the video and add anything because it's a zero for Coronius. Who's next? Uland, the druid. This guy is an expert at the cure spell. Like his gimmick is that he cures people a bit more when he cures them, but in honest truth, especially in the vanilla game, by the way, cure is a buffed spell in the Horn of the Abyss. We'll need to come back to Uland maybe at the end. The main reason you're casting cure is to rid yourself of debuffs. If you've been cursed or slowed by the enemy, cure cures that. It also gives you a bit of HP as a as a bonus. But Uland can't like over cancel the debuffs by being good at cure. So, he's just not he's just kind of boring. The one cool thing he does have is ballistics, which is just a an amazing skill. In my opinion, uh it's the one it's the one key thing in the game that I just think is great that the whole community is constantly telling me I'm wrong about. Uh ballistics though has been buffed in the Hall of the Abyss as well. So, anyway, Uland I think is pretty terrible. The fact that he lives in the town adds what to the power of the town? I don't actually think it's nothing. >> [snorts] >> Because you could just about hire him and you'd be just about happy. He might end up teaching skill uh cure sorry, he might end up accidentally teaching cure to Coronis because as a scholar he can learn stuff as well as teach it. So, Coronis learns cure and teaches it to somebody who matters like Kaya. >> [laughter] >> So, let's I'll allow Uland to actually matter uh in the vanilla game. I'm going to be thinking about cure in Hall of the Abyss though when we come back at the end of the video. Will it be enough to move the needle? I don't know. So, one point. And we're on now to Elleshar. Elleshar is actually pretty good, thankfully. What a relief. This guy has intelligence uh and his specialty is intelligence, right? Yeah, his specialty is intelligence. So, he gets even more spell points as he levels up than other heroes that have intelligence. And that's actually quite good. Right, so yeah, the knowledge the two knowledge that he starts with quickly uh can balloon into quite a high spell point budget, which is quite good. He starts with curse as well, which a little bit like uh who was that fellow Ingham in the uh castle starts with a spell that uniquely you cannot learn in the Ramparts Mage Guild. And that can be quite handy, too. If you do hire Coronis, I'm finding all these up applications for Cronus. Hire Cronus. He will learn curse and then teach it to everybody else. There you go. So, hang on. Now, let's buff Cronus. There you go. You're The fact he's a scholar makes him a little bit less than completely woefully useless. I'm not sure how many other scholars there are in the list. There aren't any, I don't think. Yeah, there are no no other scholars. He's the only one in the whole town. So, there you go. There's there's an application for him. I think Alisha's a good hero. Um If I roll him at the beginning, uh yeah, I could level him up and use him as a spell caster. The mage guild in the rampart is a solid mage guild. It's quite a good one. I think he's a decent hero, Alisha. Happy for you to be up here, mate. Okay, so that's two points. And we're on now to Gem with her incredible artwork. Gem is an interesting hero. Her specialty is first aid, and she starts with a first aid tent. She does also know the summon boat spell in the vanilla game. I think they changed that in Horn of the Abyss. Um Yeah, they did. And that's because summon boat is a really really powerful and useful thing to know. Probably in multiplayer as well. It gives just a little bit of that slightly unfair edge to one of the players. Uh in PvE, yeah, it might matter, it might not, uh depending on whether you've got a shipyard near your starting location. Now, first aid is a really wanting skill in the vanilla game. Uh it's not amazing. But, the fact that you get the free first aid tent is meaningful. She starts with a spell book, uh and she starts with quite a bit impactful spell that she could teach to Cronus, as we've figured out. So, I think it's okay. Gem's all right. I can't be too brutal to the all of the clerics. I will allow Gem to live here. I think from memory, this is exactly where I put Rion in the castle. And then, um when we jump to Horn of the Abyss, where the first aid tent is massively incredible now in version 1.81, we'll be coming back to think about that uh when we do the Horn of the Abyss section at the end. I think Gem's okay, so she's worth two. Moving on to Malcolm, the Druid. And we have, similar to Sandor in the castle, a completely useless hero that is a specialist at Eagle Eye, which is the most useless skill. In fact, the most useful thing in the entire game. One saving grace of Malcolm is that he does know magic arrow. And that means hiring with his 20 knowledge, he can actually go running around and he can throw four magic arrows early in the game in week one, or even in week four if you need someone to just quickly, you know, gallop out of your town to go do things with no help. You could actually use this guy to do that. But, yeah, Eagle Eye puts you down in the Eagle Eye rank, I'm afraid. Now, Melodia. And that's like as we're as we're going you see you start to see these ranks get filled up. This is really the problem because your assets need to hit the scales high enough to drag these scores up, and that's what's going to you know, you can't have an entire faction or an entire class of hero that's wanting and expect to score highly, I don't think, on our tier list. But we'll see how we go anyway. Melodia. Fortune is her specialty, and she has basic luck as her skill. Now, I actually do like luck. Luke Luke luck likes lakes. And so do I. I like luck. >> [snorts] >> But I don't like fortune. I hate fortune as a spell. I don't want to be wasting a whole turn to cast fortune on something. It doesn't do enough. It just doesn't help enough. I think I said this before when we were talking about the spells. Okay, getting to expert luck increases everyone's luck on the field by two. Okay, that's kind of cool, but she's got luck as a skill, which means she's going to have expert luck. That's already plus three luck to everyone. Okay, it's the vanilla game, so your luck can't be debuffed by anything. So, then you're making me an expert at casting fortune, but I never need to even cast fortune, let alone be very, very good at casting fortune. It doesn't make sense to give her luck as a skill as well as being good at casting fortune. She's just just like a massive numbo. She doesn't work. In Horn of the Abyss, luck has been rethought and reimagined, and you can be cursed with bad luck in Horn of the Abyss, which is a brilliant expansion to the rules of the game. Um and which, yeah, someone like Melodia can laugh that off and say, "Excuse me, no." Because I just has infinite luck effectively. But, in the vanilla game, Melodia stinks. What else about her can I um insult? Nothing. That's it. The spell she knows in her starting spellbook is fortune. Right, Malcolm Malcolm is better than her. Did I just say that? Oh my god, I think Malcolm is better than her. Oh, that's woeful. Is that true? It is true. The number of times I've cast fortune in the game with Melodia is probably zero in vanilla. Whereas Malcolm, at least I can do eagle eye and I can learn fortune by watching her or something. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, Melodia is worse than Malcolm. And now I that's just completely occurred to me um that that's the case. Are you seeing the point of this video, right? This is why we're here. It's for these revolutionary revelation moments. Anyway, let's keep going. Alagar? Ala- shut no, don't Alagar. I quite like Alagar. He is the ice bolt guy. Yeah, ice bolt is his starting spell. Well, ice bolt I think you'll find is a massively more uh exciting thing to know than fortune. Okay, so that's really, really, really nice. His second secondary skill is sorcery. I think I talked about this in the hero rankings. Uh well, I zoomed in on this guy because sorcery works. It buffs the damage of damage dealing spells. He clicks neatly together. There's no other Silver Surfer here, though. Is this too generous? I think I'm happy there. He's a really, really solid hero, but not quite at that silver scale for me, Alagar. And the last druid is Eris. Now, Eris' specialty is a bit different to the others. He's got creature specialty. He buffs the pegasi in your army. And that doesn't count much for me at all. Doesn't really add a lot to the equation, because I don't really like pegasi as a creature type. I don't really want to spend my campaign making Eris awesome. One important caveat distinction, though, is that he does start with scouting, and that's fantastic for a a starting hero or a someone that you're able to hire on day one to begin unlocking the information that's immediately around your starting area. Scouting's quite good. So, for that reason, I don't think Eris is a complete and utter nil pois. >> [sighs and gasps] >> But, with that said, am I ever really going mental with Eris? I don't know that I am. I don't think I can put a fourth druid in the eagle eye category. So, his scouting allows him to cling on by his fingernails to having some meaning um in terms of the virtue of the town in the particularly the PvE sort of setting. Anyway, so, war unicorns, what do we think? Like I said before with the basic war basic unicorn, I really, really like the basic unicorn, and I want to get to the dwelling quickly and buy them and start leveraging what they can offer my brawling army. Even regardless of which kind of build I'm going for, unicorns are always something I'm eager to get to. Now, if I've got the money, the upgrade is a pretty high priority. I do like the war unicorn. I do like that extra movement. Uh I think it really makes a big difference. There is also a pretty big buff to HP that you get as well. And so, the upgrade's worth the money. And with that said though, it's not like I have to desperately do it because my base level unit sucks. It's not like that, you know, it's or or because the upgrade is just such a massive no-brainer the way it is with the elves. It's not as much of a no-brainer. However, having said that, war unicorn is such a solid unit. I think it deserves a place up here in the silver status alongside the little brother. In the tier list video I did for creatures, I kind of ranked this one higher just in terms of its desirability and value for money. So, I'm going to retain that. Uh that kind of I don't know what visually is going to look better. So, that's quite a big deal, right? A silver level asset in the town uh is four points normally, but it actually is eight points because the tier ups upgraded tier six units um just pull that have that bigger punch on the outcome of how your campaign is going to go than the other assets we've talked about. So, it's eight points for the war unicorn. Albeit that it's less silver than the than the basic one. Anyway, I've made that point. Now, onto the green dragons. And I talked um about green dragons before. I really really like this unit. I consider the green dragon a kind of a mid-game target. I want to get my cliffs up pretty quickly. It's not as expensive to build the um first uh stage of the dragon cliffs. And when we talked about the angels in the castle video, that's a pretty expensive dwelling that that portal of glory. This one's cheaper. It's literally half the money uh and it's 20 crystal instead of um 10 of every uh other resource. So, they're a lot easier to get. Now, what do you get for your money? Well, okay, you still get a pretty good brawler. You get the dragon breath effect, which you can really leverage to get some nasty attacks in. The AI is quite good at dodging that. Um I think that's even been improved in the Hall of the Abyss. Uh they the AI will play around your dragon breath, but the fact that you've got it in force and you're forcing them to play around it is is is a really useful thing, I think. The other thing is the spell immunity. You can't be cursed. You can't be slowed. You can't be blinded. Um and angels can't say that. They don't have that. One of the downsides though, it can be a two uh sided sword, two-edged sword. If you've got a hero that's doing lots of blessing and hasting uh and that kind of stuff, uh bloodlust if you've got access to that for some reason, none of that will work either on the green dragon, but there's nothing quite like getting a good stack of six or nine green dragons early on, week two, week three, and all of a sudden, oh, that fight to get past that uh waypoint or or whatever it might be to crack into that subterranean is now a walk in the park thanks to these guys. Thank god you're here. So, yeah, the green dragons for me are very, very strong. They're a really, really important feature in the town that drags, you know, your interest back into the game. It's like, oh yeah, I'd rather play Rampart. Well, I played Rampart. Oh yeah, I can get dragons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's go Rampart. You know, they're they're they're pulling their weight uh massively for me. They're a little bit weaker than the angels we talked about before in the castle video, but they're cheaper to get. Uh and that means you can maybe get them that little bit sooner. There are going to be some campaigns where they arrive a whole week earlier than the angels. So, I'm going to put them just barely clinging on here to gold class standard. I think they are just about there. You can maybe convince me that they belong here, but I think given that some of the other stuff is a bit lackluster, although that's not really a reason. It kind of was a reason, right, when we did the creatures tier? It's just like, well, if the other stuff in your faction stinks, then this creature becomes better. I don't know. I'm a little bit torn here. I think it could be here. So, I'm going to come back to that question at the end. We'll leave them there for now. That's a very, very impactful um slot for them to be in because uh they weigh two and we're uh giving them a score of five, so it's another 10 points. On to the Mage Guild and as I explained in the last video, this is really just an opportunity for us to reflect on what this Mage Guild does. It's a good guys Mage Guild, so there's no curse, no bloodlust or Armageddon, just like in the castle. Key difference really here is that it can go all the way to tier five and you can get that lovely air elemental or um tier five uh dimension door type spell at the very, very tippy top um at the end of the game uh towards the perhaps back end of the mid game or whatever it might be that you can't get um in the tier four uh castle. Uh now, I gave the Mage Guild in the castle a common uh bog standard uh ranking of two. I think for the Mage Guilds that can go up to five, as a default, I'm going to go one tier higher. So, that fifth spell is worth an extra two points uh to me than uh not having that uh ability. So, the castle was getting plus four. This town is going to get a plus six as a result of the Mage Guild having that fifth story. And we're on now to the Mystic Pond. Ooh. What does the Mystic Pond do? It's um a modest um uh addition to the town. Um actually, it's down in front here in massive graphics that gives you an extra random amount of something each week. Somewhere between one and four of a random precious resource will be added. Um and it's funny, you know, some of us are random, I don't know what I'm getting, it sounds like it's kind of junky. It actually turns out to be pretty handy. The Mystic Pond. I quite like it. Uh and it can be the case that you were low on gems and then like you roll the dice and you get the gems. It's like, "Yay! >> [laughter] >> That was what I wanted the whole time. How does the Mystic Pond's presence change the destiny of the rampart and its desirability, its power level, its raw power level? Not by an I don't think by much, not probably by enough to warrant a place on the core ingredients part of the scales. Um so I'm just going to give it uh down here. This I I almost want to give it 1 and 1/2. It's It's It's handy. It's useful. But uh you know, like it's not adding a huge amount to the virtue of the town. So I'd like to put it kind of here up here at the top actually. So I think I'm happy with it there. The Mystic Pond, you could maybe argue that it deserves a two, but I'll give it a one. >> [sighs] >> So that's two points because it weighs two. And then we're on to the Fountain of Fortune and that's like an extra little thing that gets added on in the graphic here. Uh when you build it, the Fountain of Fortune uh requires the Mystic Pond first obviously before you can build the fountain. And what that does is grants a siege defender in the town plus two luck. So it's kind of the spiritual companion to the Brotherhood of the sword that we talked about in the castle video. It gives plus two luck to the defender. I'm sorry, but that's just not going to matter. I I gave the Brother of the Brotherhood of the Sword nothing for giving plus two morale and I think it's true with this as well. There will be times where it might matter. It's not expensive to get if you've already got the fountain. But I just don't care. It's not going to It's not going to affect the game often enough to really matter. It doesn't pull any particular weight uh for me. So if you've watched the castle video already, I won't re-explain it. It's pretty much the exact same explanation over again except we're talking about luck instead of morale. And the next uh unique building is the Treasury as it's called. Is it the Dwarven Treasury? It's just called the Treasury. Uh I hope my audio's coming through all right, here. And the treasury is actually really juicy. You get 10% added to whatever money you have at the start of the week. Okay, so if you've been saving up for, I don't know, a big purchase on day one, well, when you arrive at day one, if you've managed to save up 40 grand or something or 80 grand, um, this will pay you a whole extra 10% uh, before you start making your purchases, which is great. You can actually engineer some nasty, um, stuff around this. It's a pretty solid little ability. You can't leverage it in the early part of the game, um, which is where, um, certainly I need the most help when I'm playing, you know, a typical random map on, um, a resource-less start. It's like, well, 10% of zero or a very small number is still a very small number. So, it's a little bit win more, um, if you're in the late game and you're loaded and you're rich beyond your wildest imagination and you're cruising to victory, you don't need the treasury. It's just becomes a gimmick. So, it's more in that mid game where you can leverage it, where you've got a pretty good income, you're able to build up a bit of a nest egg, and then bang, the treasury triggers and you get an extra 10% and you can manage to, week after week after week, concentrate on that in the mid game. It's pretty nice, actually. I don't think it deserves more than a two, a solid uh, two for the fact that it exists. Its existence doesn't create some sort of busted angle, um, that, uh, you know, completely breaks open, uh, the strategy and completely transforms everything that the town is doing. >> [snorts] >> But, it is a, uh, a solid, uh, thing to have access to, I think. So, it's four points for the treasury. Okay, and I'm looking here at I'm looking here at my unicorns and wondering if actually both kinds deserve silver. That might be a little bit OTT, and I'm going to just be a little jerk here and say I'm just going to move this bog standard one down a little bit in that silver category. I think the war unicorn I'm happy enough for him to drop down into bronze uh in terms of his impact on the power level of the town. I think that's okay. I think you could certainly make a case for silver in absolute terms for the war unicorn, but I just don't quite think it's true that both are silver. Now we have the totem of something. Yeah, okay, it's a spirit guardian. Now I did say in the castle video we aren't ranking the what the totem does in absolute terms. We're just talking about the sort of faction level bonuses that having the grail here adds. And for the rampart, what you get is plus two luck to your entire universe to to the entire map. Every hero on your entire roster all gets plus two luck. How much does this change the power level of the faction though? The ability to give everyone plus two luck uh [snorts] later on in the campaign. I don't think it's adding a huge amount of the story. It's not particularly transformative, so I'm going to do the same thing I said with the brotherhood not the brotherhood the colossus uh and rank it at train number one. I don't think it's doing quite enough. Again, not to be confused with the power level of the grail building in absolute terms, which of course is is amazing. I want to make one more tweak. I feel like the basic dwarf let's be real people. You don't I mean you're not it's not you're not actually going to rely on them in this kind of stock steady woohoo you know, I can be happy buying them and using them kind of thing. Not really. I don't really want to buy them and use them. I want them to either stay at home and defend or become battle dwarves. I am going to demote them. Uh I think actually I'm going to I think that most people watching probably agree with that move. I'm partly being guided by the fact that I kind of almost had some biases in my head about the rampart that I didn't honestly think they would score this highly. And I'm looking at it going, "Really? Do I hang on a second? I'm sure that I spent, you know, ages on previous video videos talking about how some of these creatures stink." And of course the druids have shown up and stunk like we expected. But there's quality elsewhere in the roster here, right? That's propping up the rest of the team pretty, pretty nicely. So I'm going to need to really go away and think about this afterwards. Anyway, we're up to the very last uh asset, the gold dragon, upgraded tier seven creature. I ranked this pretty highly in the creatures tier list video. Reason being, it's just so solid. It's such a great place to go with your money and your time and your effort. You're going to want to get to that upgrade and start It's almost like getting into a like a a big pickup truck truck or something. You feel like you're really well protected in the, you know, in investing in these guys. Part of it is because of the sheer bulkiness. They can fly over the map in one turn and all of that. Um they've got the dragon breath. They've got fantastic HP, 250 HP, right? Do good damage, but not as busted damage as the archangels. But then they also have the immunity, the spell immunity one to four. Yes, in the late game they can be imploded and that's a pretty big drawback compared to the black dragons we'll talk about when we eventually get to the dungeon. But the gold dragon is just such a solid, solid place to put your money and something that really uh makes a massive difference. I I have to give them a silver. They they they they got an A minus or something in the creatures tier list. It's still that for me. Um a really, really solid unit. The gold dragon uh because upgraded tier seven matters a lot in this in the sense of how good the tier seven upgraded creature is matters a lot on the on the waiting scale. That'll will 12 points that we're adding. Which gets us up to a whopping 99 for the Rampart, which is I've got to be honest, I didn't think that Rampart would get anywhere near 100 when I was starting this about an hour ago. And so, I've really come away learning something. I almost want to go away and play Rampart again now. Um to try and just check and test some of my knowledge and all my my vibes and feelings about this. If you were to take the Green Dragon and say, "Paul, you've been way too generous. The Green Dragon's just a stepping stone. Both be up there." I could demote the Green Dragon to bronze. Let's If I demote the Green Dragon to bronze, what happens? We lose two by two. You lose four points. So, we go from 99 to 95. Doesn't actually hurt the list that much. The whole point of this exercise is that each asset gets to have its own individual say and contribution. You could make the case that it's silver. The Green Dragon could be silver, right? I guess. I made a great big fuss about the angels. They're more expensive, but movement 12, man. You get the 50 damage. The dragon is more needed by the Rampart in isolation, though. The fact that you're you're the Rampart, whereas what we're trying to do here is assess in absolute virtue terms, what does that creature do? I could maybe be persuaded, yes. Okay. All right, but not to bronze like not to bronze, but I could maybe be persuaded that it isn't quite there. Anyway, I think I'm happy enough to do that. That does dock them another couple of points, but look, 97 is still a very very good score. All right. So, with that shocking revelation that the Rampart is actually pretty darn good, >> [laughter] >> which I did not see coming. With that revelation in mind, uh we want to move on to the Horn of the Abyss and think about how does the changes made to the Horn of the Abyss affect the Rampart? Um one thing just to get off the my chest early, there's a new hero called Giselle. Here she is. Ta-da! And as I said in the castle video, new heroes are not being added. There's a 17th hero doesn't really add to the power level of the town. It just adds to the variety. >> [snorts] >> Giselle also, I'm not a big fan of interference. I don't really like the whole interference thing. I kind of preferred resistance if I'm honest. Um, but that's uh, beside beside the point. So, anyway, she's not um, getting a ranking. If you're interested in Horn of the Abyss, just as a little aside, it's an expansion to the vanilla game which is magnificent. You've heard of mods. You've all played computer games. You all have this idea, "Oh, you can get mods for the game." It's like, "Ah, yeah, yeah, mods. I don't really want to play with mods like that some guys made up. It'll probably make my game crash or, you know, I'll get a virus when I download it." This kind of stuff. Like, it's it's like I get the stigma around it, but guys, this mod This is not just any mod. This thing is majestic. It's It's like it it does the original game like the most beautiful service and homage. The introduced artwork, the extra stuff that they've thought about that but particularly the rebalancing of specific things in the vanilla game. They haven't rebuilt the whole game from the ground up. It's tweaks around the edges that just make the game that little bit more balanced and um, enjoyable. It also gives you a bunch of other cool quality of life features and uh, optionality around scenarios and so on. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'll have to do a massive video about it at some point. Anyway, when you're playing in the Horn of the Abyss as the Rampart, what changes? What what what moves do we need to make on this list? There's a few things going on here. Let's work from the top down. The first affected party member would be Kaire at the very very top. Logistics has been halved in value. As in it literally adds half as much movement to your hero's daily routine as it did in vanilla and that's a huge reduction. Massive. Now, Kaya's actual specialty has not been touched. The relative bonus in percentage terms per level has been retained, right? It's 5% per level. So, the question for us is does that take the shine off enough for her to drop down into silver? And I think the answer is yes. I've thought about this. I think it's begrudgingly yes. It's very very tippy top of silver now for Kaya. We start with minus one. Let's think now about what else happens. These creatures aren't changed. Uh the creatures generally aren't changed. The heroes do change though. So, Ryland now instead of giving his uh dendroids plus 5% per level um of awesomeness, he gives them 20% I think it is. Yeah, it's it goes from 5% to it was I literally his unique ability is quadrupled in uh value. And that's I was kind of talking before about the only reason he's up there in bronze is because of his diplomacy. And literally that's the whole point of why um he he he he got anywhere near being bronze was his diplomacy in the first place. And diplomacy's can be completely reworked. All of the crazy busted things that happened vanilla with in vanilla with diplomacy have been fixed in order of the abyss. It's just an okay skill now. In fact, if anything it's probably a bit wanting. And that means Ryland's claim to fame at bronze has actually gone. The reason he's here is diplomacy. It's it was never the dendroids. So, the loss of the diplomacy is not canceled out by the improved buff. And I actually think he drops down to the shield category despite the fact that he's quite high as a starting point. Aligar's ice bolt, instead of dealing 3% more damage per level deals 10% more damage. So, it's like a more than trebling of his special skill. However, ice bolt is still just ice bolt. I love I like that you're here, but I still I'm not quite saying silver for Aligar. I think he moves to the left, right? He becomes a better bronze, but I don't think he's quite silver. Mefala's skills have been left untouched because Armorer is already a really powerful skill. Uh the Horn of the Abyss guys realized that um giving her a further buff to that would just uh be kind of OP. So, I don't think Mefala moves. Genover doesn't change. The Mage Guild doesn't change. These creatures don't change. Iver's specialty is elves and instead of 5% per level, it's now 20% per level. So, even a handful of elves are going to be completely deadly in the hands of Iver after just a few levels. You get up to level six or seven. Um it's just it's just like preposterous, right? He was already knocking on the door of bronze, so I think it's a plus one for Iver. Uh so, we're back to minus one. Am I keeping good track here? It was minus one here, minus two, then no changes here yet, then plus one for Iver. Elisha, I don't think he changes, but if he does, I don't care too much about the intelligence being better. Uh this guy's been left unchanged, I think. Uh the treasury still does what it did before. Let me just check. Does indeed. Now, we foreshadowed Gem. Gem is the first aid girl. She teleports an entire rung uh or she goes all the way teleports past all these guys comes up to here because first aid has been profoundly improved in Horn of the Abyss. Maybe we'll look into why one day. So, that's a plus one gets us back to zero. Okay. Let's move down here. Uh this stuff stays the same. This guy has a couple of things going on. I'm going to come back to him. Now, the totem. Yeah, well, these three these three uh assets here, this guy, this thing, and Melodia uh all have to be talked about. Actually, before we talk about them the reason I want to talk about them together is it's a luck issue, right? I want to talk about We do have to talk just very quickly about Clancy. He gets unicorns as unicorns are even better than before. Don't care enough to move him off floor zero. Yeah, okay, I think that's right. Now, let's talk about this luck thing. Technically, this is a luck thing as well, right? All these luck people luck has been reworked in Horn of the Abyss. You can now give your opponents negative luck, and so if Melodia or you frighten of walking into an engagement against an enemy hero, that enemy hero can easily be giving them right out of the gate minus two luck. So, positive luck matters a lot more now. Having access to be able to get your hands on positive luck acts as a really important hedge against being nagged having your luck taken off you at the start of the game. When negative luck triggers in the game, I talked about this in the Artifacts tier list, it is absolutely brutal when you're playing Horn of the Abyss. So, positive luck matters more. How much more? Well, let's go through and have a look. So, think about the totem. If I could give my entire empire plus two luck in Horn of the Abyss, I would bite your hand off. Yes, it's it's really good. I think it's a lot better than the plus two morale in this setting, not in vanilla. I think that's worth an entire extra run for the totem. I think that goes up. And because it weighs two, that would be two extra points. Um my voice is starting to go, apologies, but uh thinking then uh if we go to Melodia, the ultimate ultimate luck queen, right? She has basic luck as a skill, fortune as her spell, and then she's a specialist in fortune. That's still a massive number. I still She's okay She's better than she was. She probably leapfrogs these heroes and she comes up here a little bit, but she's not moving up in the world beyond this bottom tier, I don't think. Um U Freeton's an interesting run by one, right? Because his He's got two things going on. Yes, he has luck, which gets better, his basic skill, but because he's the dwarf guy, all of his dwarves are now four times more buffed than they were before under his stewardship. That's good. Got to say that's actually really, really good. Does he get to retain resistance? Yeah, no, he does have to swap his resistance for interference, which is the spell power debuffing ability that I'm not a big fan of. Uh from a design point of view, I just think it turns the game down. Interference just makes the game less of a game. >> [snorts] >> Whereas resistance was much more fun. It's like, "Okay, oh, you're an expert spellcaster, are you? Okay. Let's just see how you get on, big fellow." I thought it was a bit more fun. Maybe there's an option to turn uh interference back into resistance. I don't know in the settings. Someone can maybe tell me. Okay, he loses resistance, that's bad. His dwarves get way better, that's good, and his luck gets better. Is it enough to promote Ufretin by a whole rung on the leaderboard? I honestly don't know. The answer will depend on how I feel when I play him. Maybe this is my next run, Ufretin manning the rampart. >> [laughter] >> Can this work? Is this good? I'm going to be a pessimist and say that he's still at uh tier one, but he's right at the top of it now. He's He's a lot better than he was with it, I think. Uh I gave the Yeah. I gave the two points. Now, what have I done here? Hang on a second. So, yeah, Ufretin's not moving the needle, Melodia's not moving the needle, Clancy's unicorns don't move the needle. The last thing to think about is the plus two luck in a siege enough to matter? Can I finally come up here? If I do, it's plus two. I don't think there's enough there. No, there's not enough there. So, I think it's just a plus two, so I'm going to put that 99 back on now. I think that's it. I That's That's everything Heart of the Abyss does. I can't think of anything else. If you guys can think of anything, let me know in the comments. If I've made any logical uh kind of fallacies in my leap from vanilla to HotA, there'll be other people out there who know the stuff better than me, probably. And that's kind of true of everything, um as a general statement. Can I just say, I can't believe how well this faction has done. I have always thought of Rampart as being kind of one of the really wanting factions. It's kind of like, "Ah, Rampart, it's fun, it's flavorful." I mean, I love the music and I love the graphics. I love the role-playing. I love the grand elves. But, we're talking bottom half of the roster, right? It's not the greatest faction in the world. Let's be realistic, people. I did not think it would come anywhere near 100. Um but, I'm looking here at bronze. I'm looking at the shield uh level, common level two. I'm saying, "Yeah, I'm happy with these assets sitting on those trays." Tier four, I'm over-loving the dragons, maybe. And that the whole thing with the unicorns is well, you can't love both. Maybe that's a little bit true. But, let's say I moved one of them down. Okay, I'm I'm still in the mid-90s. It's still a pretty good score. Again, if you know if you've seen the castle video, you'll know how close that is to what we gave the castle. Uh anyway, now, before I sign off, uh I thought we would take a very quick look at the leaderboard. Yes, I am using a graphic that I've already used on a previous video, so please forgive me for that. Anyway, um castle is winning so far, and Rampart is coming second. When we switch to Horn of the Abyss mode, the same pattern is true as things stand currently. So, as I've uh said before, if you are still with me, if you've watched the entire analysis of the Rampart here with me, thank you so much for your company. I really appreciated it. Please do stick around for the rest of the towns in the series. I'm having an absolute blast recording these and talking about this amazing game. Any opportunity to do so is just something that's an absolute privilege for me. Uh let me know how you think I got on in the comments. If you want to agree with me or disagree with me, it's always welcome. Uh I'd love to chat with you there. Otherwise, I'll see you again all soon for the next installment, which will be the Tower Town. So, stay frosty until then, and I will see you then. Bye for now.