After trying every combination of heroes, I decided to try something seemingly insane- a heroless start.

- Immediately disbanded all initial heroes after clicking upgrade on the Palace

- Started building as many Marketplaces and Guardhouses as possible (knowing that heroes tend to get scared off easily by Guardhouses)

- Built and upgraded a Rogue's guild for emergency extortion if needed

- Upgraded the Wizard's Tower to level 3

- Managed to fight off the Alpha Dragon, lost a couple of guardhouses but otherwise fine

- Got lucky and the caravans made it to one of my marketplaces

- Had enough income to just Lightning Storm the undead swarm into oblivion

- Saved enough gold to build 2 Temples of Krolm, started synchronizing summoning Barbarians and Rogues as fast as possible

- Upgraded the Palace to level 3 and immediately disbanded the heroes afterwards.

- Built strings of Wizard Towers to cast Farseeing to explore the map.

- Eventually found the Evoker's Castle (no idea it existed) and burned it down with Lightning Bolts (Note- gnomes will not attack it, no matter the bounty)

- Decided it would be safe to start recruiting heroes at this point, decided to go Krypta/Fervus/Lunord. Figured the trash mobs + Adepts patrolling the city would help cut down on the gnomes

- Swarms of gnomes are running up to my heavily fortified border of Guardhouses and Wizard Towers but get scared and run away before they can do real damage, especially if I enchant a few towers

- There are just too many gnomes and my heroes can't kill them in meaningful amounts. Even Wizards can't put out enough DPS to do much.

- My heroes won't just go to explore flags without getting sidetracked by gnomes. Eventually I get a good bit of the map explored with Winged Feet on heroes and just Wind Storming the gnome mobs away long enough for them to make it to explore flags

- I eventually find the gnome outposts after a lot of grinding this way and build a Sorcerer's Abode, knowing my heroes will never make it to them and survive long enough to do 1,000 damage.

- After many days of just making tons of money and repeatedly Earthquaking the 3 outposts, I claimed victory.

This mission took me over 600 in-game days to complete. Absolutely the grindiest game of Majesty I've ever played.

I'm not sure exactly how many Marketplaces/Guardhouses I built, but I know at the end of the game that a Marketplace costed like 8,000 gold to build and a Guardhouse cost around 80,000 to build (I ended up having to rebuild a few Guardhouses as well).

Shout-out to all of the Veteran Guards who died to stave off the gnomes. I was seeing unit names like "Veteran City Guard #2,385"

No idea how people manage to beat this quest without cheating. The evoker wasn't too bad for me. The undead horde was put to rest with a warriors guild shield and a couple lightning storms. What was bad was the constant stream of gnome fighters and magi. Oh, I'll just have 3 marketplaces and resurrect the heroes that die. Lvl 5 paladin gets paralyzed, then instakilled. How about 6 marketplaces by day 27? Heroes constantly die. They would've died even faster if I recruited new heroes. Funny thing was even when I cheated and killed tens to hundreds of gnomes via lightning storms, they still appeared out of thin air and rapidly killed the heroes I had left. The dragoncallers that summoned dragons were a walk in the park compared to this.
Would love to hear how this quest is reasonably possible. Otherwise it would be "grand master" difficulty, which sadly quite a few of the modded quests are. At least it's not marked "beginner".

Following up, the Evoker should be made visible from the start, otherwise, it is a complete RNG autoloss if you don't stumble onto it with a couple days or so.

Curious how people deal with effectively being punished for having any actual heroes? Most of the mission is fine, but the hero switching mechanic basically means you are at the mercy of RNG, unless it is intended you simply crank out 20 cheap disposable heroes and hope none of them actually are good (which of course means they are useless for anything beyond hunting down the evoker)

OK, this quest is stupid hard. I managed to survive the super ice dragon, eliminate the evoker (which I used Revelation to find, b/c come on!) and survive the undead hoard by spamming Rage of Krolm, but even with three Lvl. 3 marketplaces and an outpost and a boatload of inns, I couldn't keep up with the constant stream of ridiculously strong gnomes. They wiped out every hero and henchmen (so I couldn't even build), and then the rats just overran me. The gnomes are just too fast -- they're all over your city before you can stop them, and there are ZOUNDS of them. This would be more fun if your heroes started at Lvl. 5 -- then at least you could keep up with constantly losing them.

Two things. (1) The gnome magi, as stated here, are simply OP. They slice through every hero that went against them like butter; (2) The undead wave that spawns next to your town has to be bugged -- it completely wiped out two guilds worth of paladins I'd built expressly to counter it and wasn't even phased. Went on to decimate the rest of my town and that was THE END. Even worse than the gnome magi!

If you use your Rogue's guild extort, it zeros out caravans.

@Applejacks180 - So the way normal caravan spawning works, is it looks at your total marketplace count & levels and distance and then gives it a gold amount using a formula. If you have no marketplaces, the caravan spawns in with 0 gold. In normal circumstances caravans only spawn when you have a market, but I did not perform that check for this scenario since I always wanted them to spawn in at a certain time. Let me know if you see this issue when you DO have a marketplace at the time they spawn in.

The caravans that arrive have 0 gold in them... How much should there be?

It took FOREVER and many many tries...but I finally beat it. This was rough...I hate those damn gnome magi! Thank you for the challenge!

Ah ok. If you figure it out let me know. Would be really cool

@AlbertMelfo - Haha, that's a cool idea, but I'm not sure exactly how to get that added into these quests. I've never really messed with sounds/music type of stuff.

@VikesRule, my brother does a lot of impressions and can do a pretty good court adviser guy (or whatever his name was). Let me know if you want and I can get you two in touch to have him create audio tracks for the intros to all your quests. Would definitely be rad

@Dundao - Yes, that is part of this quest. Each day your strongest hero will turn against you until you destroy the Evoker.

One's own hero suddenly becomes another's hero. It's still mine on the list, but he's attacking my building.

wooooo thanks i will try it soon ^^ <3

So finally won by the skin of my teeth.
The main things to remember:
* You'll be wanting gateway and some heavy hitters nearby ( such as a pair of warrior guilds so you can call to arms as you gateway ).
* Gnome Magi are evil. Try to avoid having your heroes confront them directly.
* Forget about wiping out every gnome structure you see. The outposts are what drive their expansion and are what you need to win, so focus on them.
* When you find the enchanter lair you of course want to take it out. Keep in mind that it has 5000 hp ( 5 times that of a gnome outpost ), so even an airdrop of heroes will need time to wipe it out.
* I found that wizard towers could at least distract magi, and help drive off or kill other gnomes.

Yet another amazing mission, although it has been a frustrating one. I repeatedly fine huge swaths of warriors cut down by only one or two low-level gnome mages. Any advice on how to effectively counter them?

Another great quest ! , thanks

Super excited you got the next one out! Can't wait to try it! Hope you had a great Thanksgiving =)

Glad to see people still pumping out content for this amazing game