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New Objects in Armageddon's Blade Expansion Editor
- Dwelling (size = 4sq)
- set owner
- set min level, set max level (1-7)
- tick the town types of which this dwelling might be
- set to be same type as certain random town on the map
- Dwelling by Level (size = 4sq)
- Dwelling by Town (size = 4sq)
- Vertical Garrison (size = 3sq)
- Vertical Anti-Magic Garrison (size = 3sq)
- Quest Guard (size = 1sq) - just like Border Guard, but you need to complete a quest in order to pass. Can be customized similarly to quest hut, except that the only reward is a pass.
- Border Gate (size = 3sq), horizontal only. Once you visit the Keymaster's Tent, Border Gate will let you pass, but unlike the Border Guard, will not disappear. This way enemies will need to get their own pass, also enables the possibility of creating a one way pass on the map.
- Hero Placeholder - used when creating campaign scenarios. One of the heroes from the previous campaign scenarios will appear as the placeholder hero. You can customize power rating of Hero Placeholder, this way you may have the most powerful (or second/third...eigth most powerful) hero from the previous campaign appear at this specific spot. Hero Placeholders are essential when creating campaign scenarios, but completely useless in normal scenarios (maps).
New Dwellings can be viewed on Map Locations page.
New Features of Armageddon's Blade Expansion Map Editor
Town Properties screen updates:
Spells: now you can customize not only which spells may appear in the mage guild, but also which spells must appear in the mage guild (limited to the maximum number of spells of course). Spells are now chosen separately for each level.
Seer's Hut Properties screen updates:
In HOMM3 the only customization were artifact required and the reward, but in AB you can customize:
- quest type: achieve experience level, achieve primary skill(s) level(s), defeat a specific hero, defeat a specific monster, bring artifact(s), bring creature(s), bring resource(s).
- ability to set deadline by which the quest expires.
- ability to customize proposal message (the offer), progress message (if you come with nothing) and completion message.
Witch Hut Properties screen updates:
Can now be customized: tick the potential secondary skills that might appear there.
Garrison Properties screen updates:
Checkbox "Troops are removable". Ticked by defeault, but if not, players will be able to put troops into garrison but will not be able to take them out. This creates a possibility of giving player a guarded pass without giving him a big army early on.
Armageddon's Blade Expansion Random Map Generator
Works either when starting a new scenario single/multiplayer game or you can create a random map by clicking new in scenario editor. In both cases, the random map generator has the following set of options:
- map size and presence of subterrain level
- number of human/computer players (1-8/random)
- number of computer only players (0-7/random)
- number of human/computer teams (0-7/random)
- number of computer only teams (0-6/random)
- water content (none/normal/islands/random)
- monster strength (weak/normal/strong/random)
Armageddon's Blade Expansion Campaign Editor
Once you start to create a new campaign, you need to choose one of 13 continent maps. Continent map is what will be displayed to player between maps, it's where they choose the next map. Next thing to do is to type up campaign name, description and choose a theme music out of all music files present. There's also an option whether scenario difficulty is selectable. The list of regions available for scenarios (maps) is displayed on the map. The number and shape of active (selectable) regions depends on which continent map you choose (out of 13 available). List of properties for a scenario (region):
- region color: one of 8 player colors. (the region will be 'held' by that player).
- map file and defeault difficulty.
- region right-click text.
- tick list of scenarios which need to be completed before this one can be played.
- optional prologue: choose one of over 40 music files and one of over 50 movies and type a message that will be displayed. (man, this is sooo cool!)
- optional epilogue: same as prologue, but appears after the scenario.
- crossover options:
- tick what your heroes may retain: experience, primary skills, secondary skills, spells, artifacts.
- tick which creatures/artifacts are allowed to be carried over.
- starting options (what choice player gets when entering a scenario), choose which player will be played by a human.
- starting hero options: place 3 heroes, one of which the player may choose as his/her starting hero.
- starting crossover hero options: choose to use one of the heroes from one of the previous scenarios.
- starting bonus options: choose a bonus: spell, creature (and quantity), artifact, spell scroll (choose a spell), primary skill (customize values of primary skills given), secondary skill (choose a skill and it's level), for all above choose the recipient hero - to whom the bonus will be given, the most powerful hero by defeault. Other options are building in player's main town or certain quantity of a resource.
So, before you can make a campaign, you need to make the separate scenarios, work out the completion path, carefully put placeholder heroes onto the scenarios and only then use the campaign editor to find the suitable continent map and set region preferences. Making a good campaign is an extremely long and difficult task, but I'm sure players can handle it.