Harnessing the Beasts of War – Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard

This is a guide for Harnessing the Beasts of War, Chapter 4 of the Lizardfolk campaign in Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard. It includes a detailed walkthrough, a handy map, and a table listing all the points you can earn throughout the mission.

Harnessing the Beasts of War Map

Legend

1. Nexus
2. Plaque
3. Order of the Flame Nexus
4. Corrupted Tree
5. Umbragen Nexus
6. Nature Shrine
7. Blood Queen Ceremony
8. Restless Spirit
9. Treasure Room
10. Spirit of Greathawk
11. Marilith
12. Drider

Exits:

• A: Tunnel.
• B: Tunnel.

Description

Now that the time for war has come again, the Lizardfolk must bring the War Felldrakes back into the fold to defend their lands once more. To their horror, they find that their new enemies are already threatening the sacred grove of these great beasts.

New Units

• Spirit of Nature
• War Felldrake

Walkthrough

You’ll get to use Darroc for this chapter, as well as one of the four regular champions. Darroc is a melee champion, so you might want to choose a support champion like Wowen to assist him rather than another melee champion like Redfang.

The clock will be ticking right from the start in the chapter. Until you stop the ceremony that is sapping the strength of the war felldrakes (#7), a war felldrake will die once every five minutes. There are five war felldrakes in all, and if you can’t save at least one of them, then you’ll lose the mission.

To save the war felldrakes, you’ll have to defeat all of the Umbragen units at the ceremony beneath the corrupted tree (#4). Since you won’t find very many Umbragen units there, and since they won’t be replenished if you kill some, beating the group eventually shouldn’t be a problem. The trick is to kill them within the first five minutes of the chapter, especially since you’ll have to build up your starting nexus (#1) from scratch, which will require a good chunk of those minutes.

So if you want to save all of the war felldrakes, what you’ll have to do is immediately start building your nexus, and then run your two champions right to the ceremony. Conveniently, the exit closest to the ceremony (Exit B) and the surface area over the ceremony will both be exposed, and so you can center the view on the surface area, then switch to the underworld view, and then click to tell your champions where to go. Various enemies will attack your champions along the way, but they won’t pursue them all the way to the ceremony.

Note: It’s probably a good idea to read the plaque at #2 before heading to the ceremony. If you have Wowen as your champion, then you can do it on the way. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait for a tribal shaman to be produced to read it. You might also want to fight some of the spiders in the underworld first, to charge up the power-up ability of your non-Darroc champion.

When you approach the ceremony site, a blood queen will be resurrected, and a few Umbragen units will attack you. Make good use to Darroc’s “dragon leap” ability to damage and knock down the Umbragen, and have your other champion help out as much as possible. When you defeat the Umbragen units, you’ll gain control of all of the war felldrakes.

Note: If you can’t win the battle with just two champions (we’ve done it on the hard difficulty setting using Wowen and Darroc, so it is possible), don’t worry about it too much. War felldrakes are the Lizardfolk juggernaut unit, and you won’t need all five of them to beat the chapter.

Once you’ve saved the war felldrakes, the rest of the chapter should be pretty easy. You’ll just need to defeat the two enemy nexuses in the region (#3 and #5). But since the Order of the Flame and the Umbragen will be fighting each other as well as you, they won’t put too much pressure on you, and so you should be able to explore the underworld and build up your nexus and army in peace. Once you’ve decided that it’s time to take on your enemies, defeating their nexuses should be straightforward. If you saved all of the war felldrakes, then they might be able to defeat the nexuses all by themselves, and if you support them with your army, then it should be a total slaughter. Once the two enemy nexuses are history, the chapter will end.

1 – Nexus

2 – Plaque

You’ll need to have Wowen or a tribal shaman selected to read the plaque. Once you can decipher the words, you’ll find that the message is from a shaman named Greathawk, and that reading it will boost your spell resistance.

3 – Order of the Flame Nexus

4 – Corrupted Tree

5 – Umbragen Nexus

6 – Nature Shrine

When you use the nature totem (from #10) on the shrine, you’ll gain at least one spirit of nature, and you’ll be allowed to build Verdant Cairns at your nexus (#1).

7 – Blood Queen Ceremony

A blood queen will be resurrected when you approach the ceremony. You’ll have to defeat all of the Umbragen units here to cleanse the corrupted tree (#4) and bring all of the war felldrakes on the surface to your side. After the battle, you’ll find a talisman of vitality on the ground.

8 – Restless Spirit

The restless spirit (#8) will tell you about some other spirits who have “hidden away” in new bodies, and he’ll ask you to release the spirits so that they might find their final resting place. The spirits are inhabiting the bodies of iron golems. The golems can be found at #8a, although the one to the south will make its way to attack you once you’ve accepted the quest. Once you’ve defeated all three iron golems, the restless spirit will drop four scrolls onto the ground and allow you to take two of them.

9 – Treasure Room

The only way to enter this treasure room is to have Darroc use his “dragon leap” ability to jump over the wall. Inside, you’ll find a cloak of invisibility plus some gold.

10 – Spirit of Greathawk

The spirit of Greathawk will ask you to kill the marilith to the north (#11). Once you’ve done so, he’ll reward you with a nature totem, which you can use at the nature shrine on the surface (#6).

11 – Marilith

The marilith will drop a sword of cinders when it dies.

12 – Drider

Sadly, the drider won’t drop anything particularly useful when it dies, and killing it won’t stop the random spider battles in the underworld.

Points Chart