Better late than never, freelance friends Jason Wilson and Rowan Kaiser join Rob for a love-in on Warlock: Master of the Arcane. They discuss how much it improved with patches, how its trans-dimensional map is both amazing and wasted, and how it solves classic problems of the fantasy strategy game. Big thanks to Jonathan Downin for taking on production duties this week.
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Jason’s Warlock review
Excellent timing – it’s 50% off on Steam today!
Will listen to the podcast a little later.
I’m loving this game as well. The thing I like most about the game is it gets deeper and more strategic the more you play it. Making it accessible for new players and veterans. The only real reason I go into the other realms is to either get dragons or to clear them out and stop the monsters coming back through into the main world. This is an aspect I think they could make more of – making the portals a real threat to cities near-by. Perhaps having the spawns run a little quicker and not having an Earth Elemental sitting on the exit portal would mean more wandering monsters coming through.
Hey, first time listener, I’m liking the very detailed discussion!
I went out of my way on a recent play-through to make use of the alternate dimensions. I guess I set up the perfect circumstances… I was playing an “islands” world, and I managed to secure my starting island which also had a dimensional portal on it. So instead of turning my war effort outward toward other islands, I buffed my elemental resistances and entered the alternate dimension (don’t remember which one it was).
The alternate dimensions are square maps, and aren’t nearly as big as Ardania. The portal usually starts in the center of this square, and is mobbed with horrendous creatures. Using some highly buffed units, I was able to swarm through the portal and establish a foothold, and secure the portal. I found it useful to build a “gateway” city right next to the portal, and it was highly fortified with lots of magic towers. This gave me a base of operations to which I could retreat if I needed.
Once the initial invasion is done, you can advance your troops more deliberately, a bit like exploring the normal Ardanian wilderness. You can proceed to find a map-edge and work your way around. The enemies are tough here, but you’ll find the lairs you conquer dish out some truly amazing rewards, often times you will be gifted elementals and other rare-ish units to fight alongside your troops, and heaps of gold with which you can instantly upgrade your new troops. This has a roll-on effect, and soon your alt dimension force becomes quite formidable.
I also decided to was going to completely colonize this dimension, and I had a steady stream of settlers following my war-party and building cities on all of the awesome resource tiles. I’d say I built about a dozen cities covering the whole of the desert dimension I had cleared out.
There are many resources that cannot be found on Ardania, such as Adamantium and Gold Dragon eggs. Gold Dragons cost 2000, and are worth every penny! Needless to say, after my scourge of the alternate dimension, my conquest of Ardania was relatively simple. Dragons with adamantium armor and numerous other upgrades quickly made a mess of the other mages’ capitals.
My only complaint is that the alt dimensions should be smaller. This would make them quicker to subdue, and thus you would be more likely to give them a shot… and the investment of troops would definitely be worth it for the rewards. The amount of resources would naturally be less, if they were about half the size that they are currently. I also do not think I’ve seen the AI use the alternate dimensions, which is a shame, it seems like they are worth competing over with their unique resources.
That’s my experience with it anyway, it was a blast, and I’ve Warlocked for quite a number of hours!