Quest Background: Plague has inflicted the land and only the Magic Ring of Healing can save the kingdom.
Objective: Find the Magic Ring and bring it to the ring site on the far away area of the map.
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"The Curse of the Black Phantoms" |
The atmosphere on this map is generally peaceful. There will be very few challenges from roaming or waves of attacking monsters. There is a computer-controlled kingdom on the map, which makes things extra interesting. The other kingdom will be friendly in the beginning so your kingdom's heroes can mind their own business while building up.
Since there are few monster threats (until you destroy the first ring site), you can take as much time as you want to build up your economy and hero force. A Helia temple is already provided for you, so you can take the opportunity to train four solari right in the beginning. Eventually, as your kingdom progresses, your ranger will reveal the site of the ring, guarded by a few Daemonwood. If your economy is strong enough, flag the site and have your heroes destroy it.
When the site is destroyed, the ring will appear as an artifact on the ground. However, here is when the trouble finally starts. Black Phantoms will appear on the ring site, most likely killing or routing the heroes who destroyed the ring site. Due to the "Curse of the Black Phantoms"The other kingdom will also attack you. The Black Phantoms will guard the ring and they are quite difficult to defeat. Your best bet to defeat them is to use paladins, monks, dwarves, or warriors of discord by back constant healing. However, the objective isn't to defeat them, but to bring the ring to the other ring site on the far region of the map away from your base. Many times, you can try flagging an explore map near the ring artifact and hope that a rogue, elf, or ranger will pick it up and bring it to the ring site, giving you victory.
Under rare situations, an "enemy" hero will pick up the ring. In that case, your only option is to kill that hero to rectrieve the artifact. Even if worse comes to worse and you have to fight both the black phantoms and the enemy kingdom, the task is not terribly difficult, especially if you have dwarves to build ballista towers, which are excellent against both heroes and black phantoms. Most likely, though, one of your heroes will sneak the ring through.
