How do I win "Twilight of the Gods" final mission in Warcraft 3?

Question

I've difficulties surviving in the last campaign mission in Warcraft 3 on the highest difficulty settings. After capturing the mines and building as much of an army as possible, I get decimated by the incoming forces faster than I can rebuild. I usually end up as sole survivor (Hu/Orc base destroyed) after 10 minutes. I tried various stuff, including building wells near the place of battle and walls of ancient protectors, but to no avail.

I'm wondering if it is actually that hard, or if I just do something wrong. I was about level 30 on the solo ladder so I think my micro and macro is not utterly crappy in general.

Answer 1

What is your strategy in terms of supporting your allies with defensive structures / force composition? What I usually ended up doing is simply sending troops to assist the human base while building ancient protectors amongst Thrall's orcs.

Are you using druids of the talon? Prodigious usage of cyclone against the enemy heroes will definitely make things easier.

The way the AI is set up, once a base is destroyed, the attack waves revert to the (easiest) early waves -- so the longer you hold one base, the less time you have under assault from the crushingly cruel "GG waves" that you get hit with after you've been defending for several minutes.

Answer 2

One easy way to win is hide a large number of Ballistae behind the trees in the human base. In order to kill the trees, use Malfurion's Force of Nature spell or simply attack the trees with your Ballistae.

When the undead destroy Jaina's base, they will be unable to finish constructing their buildings because your Ballistae will be constantly firing.

Answer 3

Just finished the game in 2016 again in hard mode. Here I have a non-cheesy honorable way (without blowing up the undead's base) of winning Twilight of the Gods mission.

The key to win I think is to have massive dryads with a few hippogryph riders. That's the only way you are able to survive the hardest waves of undead army, which are

1. Hardest: undead hero with infernals, hell hounds, doom guards etc.
2. Abominations and necromancers.

Bears (druids of claw) are vulnerable to both mana burn from hell hounds and cripple spell from necromancers. Huntresses are generally too fragile.

Dryads are perfect for the listed 2 waves because of its spell immunity. As of the damage output, the slow poison can greatly slow the entire process of combat, during which Furion's Tranquility spell can increase their survivability significantly.

The added hippogryph riders can boost the damage output quite a bit, especially with the true shot aura and focused fire. And the undead army has much much more fire power to the ground army than that to the air. If you have extra APM, the hippogryph riders can be easily pulled out of combat to the fountain of life.

The ultimate wave of undead is launched roughly 15 minutes after you move to a new base. Hence if you can defeat one or two ultimate waves, the victory is yours. The easiest way to accomplish this, is at Thrall's base thanks to the goblin mines. You should always purchase the mines, and probably better save them for the ultimate waves - the hell hounds, doom guards and infernals. Infernals are the most difficult unit here because it's spell immunity and large hit points pool. Save the mines for them.

Answer 4

Another really cheap way to do it is as follows:

1. Take Tyrande to the shop near Thrall's base. Make it so her inventory contains 3 x invulnerability 3 x goblin land mines

2. Let the Undead destroy Jaina's base.

3. Just after Jaina is defeated, run in with Tyrande. Use invulnerability potions as required to avoid getting killed, and use the mines to destroy the necropolis and all the acolytes. Once you have done this, the rest of the mission is very easily completed, because the undead attack forces shrink significantly.

Answer 5

If you can't micro well, like me, I found that massing dryads and casting starfall + tranquility works. And of course build stuff in orc base like Raven said. Also, armor upgrades before attack.

Answer 6

Just finished this mission on normal. I held the human base for about 15 minutes with both heroes. One casting the AOE healing spell, hit the other with the Starfall spell and a mixture of units. That's what I would suggest too.

After that, you need to put a bunch of protectors on the edge of Thrall's base to support the towers, by this point you should have a good group of hippogryphs and archers. Combine them to make hippogryph riders and make druids of the claw. As many as you can. Then just use Tranquility and Starfall in conjunction with your normal units and you should be able to hold the Orc base until Archimonde bum rushes you at the twenty second mark. The druids make great healers and it actually takes Archimonde a few hits to kill one of them.

Answer 7

hints:

• There are two shops, both have potions of invulnerability, one has goblin mines (that shop also has a goblin mines in the crates next to it).
• Goblin mines do about 460 damage, and are invisible. They do the damage to units and buildings in the green marked area under the cursor as you place them. They do the damage either when destroyed or when walked over by an enemy unit. You may queue the placement of all three mines by using alt-click.
• The necropolis in the enemy base has 4600 health or so. The other buildings have less.
• Very early on, there don't seem to be too many acolytes in the enemy base.
• Archimonde defends the enemy base, is nearly invincible, has true sight, so will see goblin mines in his base and attack them.
• Enemy units ignore heroes using an invulnerability potion (which means you can walk into an enemy base undisturbed).
• When using a scroll of town portal, your units become invulnerable the moment it's activated.
• Starfall and invulnerability potion don't seem to work at the same time.
• Archimonde apparently summons a bunch of doom guards and infernals the moment he sees two enemy units (including goblin mines, or an owl).
• The enemy waves of units seem to start the moment the necessary units of each wave are in the staging area. It seems that once it's not possible for the enemy to create the necessary units (i.e. if production buildings are destroyed), then they won't attack anymore.
• It's possible to kill Archimonde, but it ain't easy:

Answer 8

My unit composition was only mounted archers for the two first bases and only archers for my base.

I started by taking the two additional gold mines, and making a lot of wisps into Jaina base. Then started building a lot of ancients of war inside the base and covering them with moon wells.

Then, starting upgrading the archers and building two ancients of war and wind behind the human base, to continuously send reinforcements, and using additional wisps to auto repair the structures.

I don't know the exact timings, but when I started to get overwhelmed, I flew to the orc base and used the same strategy, but I had less space for ancients of war, but I had time and gold to make more mounted archers (and they where already fully upgraded at that point).

Around 13 minutes left, I backed up to my base and due to the lack of gold, I only made ancients of war (not moon wells), and normal archers. When I was capped or nearly capped, I built some Tree of life's blocking the access to the door (that always work), and using all the buildings that were not producing to block the path.

I had quite the trauma with this mission and the last one of the Undead. This one was REALLY hard to me as a child on normal, and last time I played the game on Hard, I got struck with the Undead mission. I didn't thought that I would win the first time, and less with this strategy, but it worked. I had plenty of time at the end, I ran out of gold but my units where still up, and the buildings blocking the path where intact.

Good Luck!

Answer 9

Just completed the hard mode not to long ago. This mission never fails to make me bored. The more you play, the more energised you are.

For me I use mainly hippogryph riders and dryads. It is important to keep all the three heros alive including Jania, as her mana regeneration helps dryads a lot.

Always take note of the wave where the undead send 2 heros, the winterchill and alagmore together. That is always the deadliest wave. I repel it using starfall and Tranquility together with lots of hippogryph riders and dryads. and after the wave, quickly rebuild your forces. Also reserve land mines for that wave.

Answer 10

I just beat this on hard held the human base the whole time. Jaina's brilliance aura allows malf to cast tranquility every push so I just spammed archers with max upgrades out of 4 ancients and a few druids of the claw to cycle roars for every wave honestly got boring the hard part is double expanding and getting your upgrades fast enough but if you can hold till then you'll be sitting at maxpop twiddling your thumbs

Answer 11

Use a divide and conquer approach. Put ancient protectors on one side and your hippogriffs on another side (with malfurion to heal and tyrande to use starfall). And put a good amount of space in between them to confuse the computer. Use malfurion's tranquility and tyrande's starfall as much as possible. The reason this works is that, particularly towards the last ten minutes, the undead start attacking the buildings rather than your units. If hippogriffs are spaced enough apart from the ancient protectors the computer gets confused and some of the npc's start attacking the ancient protectors while others attack buildings your hippogriffs are protecting. This is particulrly useful for taking out the catapults that go through your buildings like butter. When a dozen or so catapults start attacking your ancient protectors, your hippographs can come from behind and take them out. Or if they attack the buildings your hippogriffs are protecting your hippogriffs can attack them.