Hello folks. I'm playing the Beow earth legend in Lords of Magic SE. And I think I've gotten stuck. Curious if others here have beaten it or know how I should make progress here. Basically I found Vyrm in his Barrow, and defeated him. I understand at that point that the Lord of Order is supposed to abdicate for you. However, the lord of Order remains in his city and when I go and talk to him i get the same chat prompt as during our first conversation. I wonder if there is some condition that I need to activate before killing Vyrm to trigger the Lord of Order's new behavior?

I might also kill the lord of order and take his kingdom. That is less desirable because I then don't get the paladin lord unit, and I worry if doing that I also won't get the mission to destroy the orc city.

I also wonder if taking the life capital might make the final assault on the orcish city easier. I imagine a phoenix and life healing could be useful.

Cheers and thanks.

EDIT:

As of yet been unable to figure out how to get the order abdication to trigger. I managed to win despite this.

Some notes on the playthrough

- early game there will be an intense ale crunch. Explore as much as possible, solo as many caves as possible with Beow before fighting Grendel at Heorot ; once you defeat Grendel at Heorot you will get dwarf infantry, which will slowly drain your ale.
- when fighting Beow use of the ./ hotkeys to speed up and slow down game time is vital. Speed up while repositioning, slow down as enemies get close. It is also key to unstealth before attacking. When stealth is broken by an attack there is a delay before you can restealth. If you unstealth and attack you can instantly restealth once the attack is complete. Care needs to be taken to not enter stealth during an attack animation, as that will also put you in a broken stealth state.
- when clearing swamp caves with dwarf infantry it is vital to minimize damage. Resting in caves will consume ale, which is scarce. If you do not take damage, you do not need to rest. When slingers were present I would keep infantry in parry until Beow could kill slingers. Using ctrl-select to individually select and make infantry parry is key. On early encounters before the dwarf infantry levelled to adequate armour, or when there were no slingers I would often flee the infantry, so they could get XP from the encounter while not taking damage while Beow soloed the lizard infantry
- Beow's aimed missile is key against high armor targets. Against slingers or goblin crossbows however it is often better to not use aimed missile - more attacks means more hit stun, less incoming missiles and easier repositioning
- axe throwers have relatively low attack. Given typical enemy armour are generally better to use with aimed missile. Exception is when you want hitstun - key against enemy archers, or sometimes high damage enemies engaging your front line troops.
- With good resource management it should not be necessary to pay the elves their extortionate demands for ale
- Freeing the life temple and relinquishing will increase relations with life, but I don't know if this gives any benefits.
- Before crossing the mountains you should find another dwarf infantry, an order wizard, and the dwarf warrior.
- When fighting with a large party, ideally all enemy attacks will be absorbed by a parrying dwarf warrior or infantry. Careful positioning can help make this happen. Though once you have the wizard and cure scroll, taking damage during a battle is not the same threat to upkeep
- If you kill the elven lord you can potentially take the elven kingdom. In one save I did this in a battle where I lost everything but Beow who then fled. I don't know if it's possible beat life while winning all your battles, but to overcome the elven units enraged and thirsting for revenge it should be possible to whittle them down with Beow fleeing while possible ; and once you have the kingdom you can hire more life units.
- The battle against the shipwright is hard, and possible to win without losing any units, if done correctly with sufficiently leveled units. It also grants a massive store of resources. Or you can try to haggle down a bit, even if you pay a tremendous amount you should be fine as long as you can pay upkeep until you take the dragon's hoard
- You want to tell the order lord you are their for the Hermod treasure. If you attack Order at any point you lose the ranger.
- The tunnel to get to the dragon is in the 8 o clock barrow in the circle of barrows. You likely want to avoid it until you get the great artifacts from the other barrows.
- The marauding parties on the way to the orc city are truly ridiculous. If you want to fight them off, imagine having life enchantress healing, pheonix would greatly help - either after looping back or taking the life city to start.
- Possible to win without the Order or Life cities or additional troops. To do this I marched the dwarf warrior, beow, the ranger up by themselves in stealth to the orc city. When found and attacked I would flee, using the earth meld ring from the elven mountain pass when necessary to help the dwarf warrior escape. It is also often worth it to take caves and stay in them during turn end - marauders do not seems to attack parties in caves. Still, a fair number of marauder armies had to be fought where they blocked the mountain passes. For these fights I would put the dwarf warrior in parry, and pick off enemies with Beow. First any high attack or ranged units would be picked off - these were the greatest risk to the parrying dwarf or to Beow. Once those were gone I would sit at 30 speed clicking unclicking stealth as Beow cut through the remaining troops.

There's another topic in this forum "earth_quest_in_legends_of_urak", which I appreciated which took the orc city with an insanely large order army