Hello jorko80
Glad you stayed with this mod. As i said before enemy heroes fights are great part of this mod.
1) As for getting from Lucky James to dwarf king is how game is supposed to go, but after that is your choice what to do. Fight to free dwarf prince is hard to do below 10lvl hero, without losing 50% of army. And about kiting demon lands, it`s always players choice to do or not to do. But main game quests are locked with hard battles Free dwarf prince
obligatory to continue, to gain access to Elven lands (Sonya, marauder hero in underground, wizard hero in entrance to valley of 1000 rivers), then clear undead lands (evil book hero, Mysticus(horrible), and couple others) then Karador battle (which is horrible in this mod)
obligatory, after clear demons Baal battle (also big pain in ass)
obligatory, and then it`s labyrinth 7 Haas battles and orc lands 3 hero fights there (main orc hero and lore keeper were tough). And ofc last battle vs army of 5th lvl creatures and high lvl hero. You can decide to go linearly and maintain story plot, but kiting is and always were players choice.
Comparing to Ap/Cw where you could kite with hero 1st lvl to Reha and get up to 17-20 lvl before first battle (if not counting training area) , the Legend is much better kite protected. because here are some battles thet you MUST do before going further.
2) Gremlin castle making it so you have to fight first before entering is good idea and i like it, which would make ppl wait before buying it. Because game is set so difficulty of item battles is determined on hero lvl in moment you buy/get item. This i figured out by accident when got 2 same items and suppressing them gave me different battle and different exp. So higher hero lvl = tougher item battle = more exp. So why buy gremlin castle as soon as you get to dwarf king, if you can w8 and get it 10lvl later and get bunch more exp for it, instead those 2 dragon eggs and some gold if you get it soon and kite around it.
3) spirits are better then in original game settings, i like them. But as you said some changes are due. I set some things weaker then in Mat`s settings and it`s not difficult, but if you`re not sure what you`re doing better ask for advice then make problem with game files. Making Lina chargers is fast and i could help you , or Mat could give you advice how to do it.
4) Trade skills/scroll prices etc ... Gold never was big problem in this game, and to me and i`m sure many other lvling trade is only because we want skills after it. But that particular skill really have low potential, and nothing better to do with it, so bear with it and lvlup other skills more useful.
5) items losing usefulness comparing to original game. I think this was main idea. Making you have kids with wife, instead telling her you should wait with family plans, and keep her as simple mule to lug items around. You can carry what ever you want in inventory, but leave your wife to rise children, and keep her busy
And randomness with kids is great thing, you can get great pick, or you can have shi.y luck and get battle oriented kids with mage hero or opposite spell kids with warrior/paladin
On this topic, what wife/kids you running in your build ?
6) spells, as you mentioned pure spell dmg is not main effect but burning/poisoning effects, and more attention is toward buff/debuff spells because here high intellect bonuses work as was described in original game but never implemented (blind,sheep,haste... all those spells work longer for high int bonus).
7) as for bugs
- Noric and Thorny werent there in original game either
- Red beard , Dramina it`s spells bug i`m sure it`s fixable
- had no problem with telekinesis so far
- since ghosts are ,<4 lvl units entangle works on them, but i`m guessing you mean they are incorporal units and entangle shouldn`t be able to capture basically air, but it`s hard to make just one unit unentangleable (?) , same as it`s impossible to make one unit unable to be frozen (giants) but possible to shock (lightning) or some other post hit effect.
- also hadn`t problem with more then 1 burn/poison effect per turn. Lets wait for Mats idea on this.
In end, Ap/Cw mod is under develpoment for a long time, and i know lots of work is done on it to simply skip it and go to WotN. As WotN is still buggy and with problems/crashes and Ap/Cw is fully functional i vote for working mod for Ap then hasty mod for WotN. Imagine working this mod, with parts of Red sands, so your/enemy units have bonuses from tomes,heroes,and based on game difficulty and more form unit personal experience (as they lvlup depending on location in game). I agree there are lots of mods already for Ap/Cw but that`s because that release was done with more attention then latest WotN and had less bugs/problems to fix.