Game:

WarCraft II (1995)

Duration: 0:00

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1

With Khaz Modan destroyed, Act 2 of the campaign is now over and it’s time for Act 3. For this part of the game, the action shifts to Quel’Thalas, a northern region that serves as the traditional home of the Elves. It’s the Horde’s next major target for conquest, but taking it won’t be easy. We’re now in the latter half of the campaign, so going forward we can expect things to get significantly more difficult. For this mission, we’re stationed along the southern border of Quel’Thalas, and it appears there’s a valuable asset in this particular area. The warlock Gul’dan, always on the lookout for magical power, has located a mysterious Elven runestone on the island of Caer Darrow in Darrowmere Lake. It’s not clear what exactly this runestone does, but it’s quite powerful and Gul’dan wants to access its magic. Our orders are to capture the runestone and destroy the Alliance forces protecting it.

The mission starts with our base in the northwest corner of the map, and it’s not bad. We already have a Barracks, a Lumber Mill, a Blacksmith, and a Shipyard, so we’re off to a good start infrastructure-wise. We also have several combat units already—but that’s actually a problem since we only have two Pig Farms. There aren’t enough Farms to feed our current force, so I decide to have both of our two starting Peons build Farms to start off the mission. It’s a bit of a resource crunch, but we’ve got just enough Gold to build the two Farms. Once they’re built, I put both Peons to work mining for Gold to refill our coffers, and as I gain more Gold I train additional Peons to speed up our resource gathering. I start putting some to work harvesting Lumber and build more Farms to increase our population cap. We’ll also need Oil, so I use our Goblin Zeppelin to find an Oil Patch and build a Platform there to collect the black stuff. It isn’t long before our small area starts to run out of trees to chop down. Fortunately, our island is connected by an ice sheet (we’re in a winter map) to another island. We’ll need to expand there, so after scouting it out with the Zeppelin I move some Peons there to collect lumber. For defense, I have our five starting Ogres move to the new island, and from there I upgrade our Great Hall to a Stronghold and steadily build one of each advanced structure.

In this mission, building a Foundry now unlocks the Ogre Juggernaught, a truly wonderful ship. It’s a big, heavy warship that’s significantly slower than the Troll Destroyer, but it’s got 50 percent more health and its shot does almost four times as much damage! With this in mind, I start training Juggernaughts and also build a second Shipyard to increase production. Once I have five of the big ships, I send them towards the east. There are several Oil Patches there, protected by Elven Destroyers—no match for our ships. We easily sink the hostiles and I build Oil Platforms in the area, increasing our Oil production. Once I have eight Juggernaughts, I group them together with our Goblin Zeppelin—that’ll be really important soon—and sail to the south to attack the big island with the Runestone. Unsurprisingly, it’s heavily defended. The island has several Cannon Towers along its coastline, along with a number of Ballistae and Elven Archers that can fire back at our ships. There are also three hostile Shipyards that continually produce opposing ships, including the Juggernaught counterpart Battleships as well as the new Gnomish Submarine. Submarines are just that—underwater vessels that fire torpedos at hostile ships, and surface ships are unable to target them normally. Luckily, our Zeppelin is able to spot them from the air, so we can attack them as long as we don’t lose the Zeppelin.

Our Juggernaughts are far more durable than the Troll Destroyers we used in prior missions, but attrition takes a toll and we eventually lose most of our attacking force. I send two new Juggernaughts in as reinforcements, and while it’s a tough fight we successfully destroy all three of the enemy’s Shipyards. From there, it’s honestly a cakewalk. I simply rebuild our fleet and keep fighting. The Alliance actually has two bases on the map—the island with the Runestone and a support base in the southeast that has all their Farms and noncombat structures. I shell both of them from the coastline with our rebuilt navy, and we knock out most of the defenses on the island before moving to the southeast. I destroy everything I can with cannon fire, then move in a ground force of Ogres and Troll Berserkers to finish off what’s left. From there, I load our ground troops back into their Transports and move up to the island. There are a few defenders left, but they’re easy pickings at this point. I also have to destroy the Human Castle on the island—it’s the final upgrade for the Alliance Town Hall, and it’s extremely tough. Still, we take it down and then capture the Runestone to win the mission.

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