🚀 go-pugleaf

1) I suggest taking the suffering spell bonus. The 20 skeleton archers
would help you out in the first few battles but since every neutral
undead stack will join you for free automatically, they're not really
a permanent bonus.

2) Desirable secondary skills/abilities for the necromancer at the
start are: necromancy, eternal servitude, banshee howl, skeleton
archers, dark magic and destructive magic not necessarily in that
order.

3) Visit the hut of magi to the north first and then head back east to
the observatory tower.

4) Your first "acquisition" should be the horde of skeleton archers to
the east. Please take note that not all units of the neutral stack
will join you, it will be 50% plus 2 % per level of Markal.
Afterwards, capture the sawmill and take the liches.

5) To the northwest of the map, there's a fire trap wand that would be
useful since you're so limited in spell points. However, be careful of
orange wizards, I fled (pardon: strategically retreated) from one of
them. Even later on, when you would be strong enough to take them out,
you will have to keep avoiding them, because if you attack or even
pass too close to them, you will automatically lose the scenario.

6) Fire trap is very useful against djinns but for some reason, it
doesn't seem to work against gargoyles. I thought it was because they
were flyers but then aren't djinns flyers too?

7) It's possible to win easily against the water elementals even
though their spellcasting is very dangerous. First, do not group your
units together. Expect the elementals to cast a damaging spell doing
damage in a area of 3 squares by 3 squares (Circle of Winter). It's
impossible not to lose troops. Cast eldritch arrow with Markal, shoot
with your shooters. The benefit of this battle is the hill fort where
you will be able to upgrade your troops. Replaying this battle,
there's a way to reduce your casualties by removing a stack of either
skeletons, zombies or ghosts from the field so that you only have 4
stacks on the battlefield. You place the skeleton archers in one
corner and the liches in the other. You keep the skeletons and zombies
in the center, 3 steps from either shooting stacks. By placing your
creatures this way, you will avoid that "circle of winter" spell but
you will lose liches (3 in my case).

8) In most battles, I had my stack of skeleton archers stuck in a
corner flanked by the liches and the zombies. I did not want enemies
to engage hand-to-hand with them. An exception to this rule is against
mage stacks where you want your units spread out.

9) Against the rakshasa, I liked to start by casting Banshee howl with
Markal and casting decay with the archliches. Keep the non-shooters
away from the advancing enemy units unless you would lose very few
troops or unless you have vampire lords (that suffer no retaliation)
that can fly back before the enemy stack has its turn.

10) Early in the underground, you will reach Markal's level cap. This
means you can avoid battles unless a neutral stack really blocks your
way, unless the reward is really worth it (such as a great item), or
unless it's a statistic-boosting item such as a coliseum.

11) At one point underground, you'll reach a 3-way fork. The southwest
path leads to a dungeon (warlock town). I didn't know at the time of
the choice of path but I suspected it was the case since I saw a
purple hero rush past me at the fork coming from that direction.

12) Once you capture the dungeon, I suggest waiting a few days and
building your mage guild up to level 3 (up to level 4 if you have
advanced destructive or dark magic). Don't get too much attached to
it, you'll lose the dungeon rather quickly.

13) There was an orange wizard coming towards me, I had to elude him
by going in a western niche (the one with the shadow dragons). Instead
of going after me, the orange wizard went for the undefended dungeon.
If you pass too close to an enemy hero, even if the icon doesn't turn
red indicating an automatic fight, you'll lose.

14) Your final objective is north by going to the fork you didn't take
earlier. You'll fight a medium-size knight army but with standard
tactics, you should have no problem.

Finished on month 2 week 2 day 6 at normal difficulty (patch 1.4)

P.S. I had several problems with this map. The first time through, I
could not finish because there was an objective (defeat rebel army)
that didn't appear in my list. Even after I won against the knight
player, the scenario didn't end.  I deducted later on (after replaying
everything from scratch) that it was because a secondary hero I hired
exited to the surface first instead of Markal. The second problem was
with a orange wizard stuck at a certain place in the map (northwest
just below a dolmen of knowledge) refusing to move and preventing me
of going to the only path I could take to continue.  I restarted 4 or
5 times an it always did this. The only time it didn't do it was when
I took the 20 skeleton archers bonus instead of the suffering spell
but it could have been a fluke

The Quebec Dragon