Campaign

A campaign is a set of scenarios which should be won one by one so as to complete the campaign. In the table of records, there is a separate ranking for campaigns, and winning a scenario itself doesn't count in the table. There are campaigns which give the player an opportunity to choose the order in which some of the scenarios are being played (e.g. in the Unholy Alliance campaign, you may complete first four scenarios in any order as you like).

Some campaigns are available at start and can be played in any order. The other ones appear one by one after you finished the starting ones.

Important: The game tracks your progress through the campaigns via a save file, not a game flag. That means that you cannot play the scenarios in a random sequence. Start with the first scenario of one of the first three campaigns. When you finish that scenario, you create a save file. You should probably name that file by some appropriate name. Start the second scenario from that file. When you finish the second scenario, you save again. You should probably make a new file for this. When you complete the final scenario of the first campaign, save again. So far, so good. But when you start the second campaign, you MUST load your most recent save file first, otherwise your progress through the campaigns is lost. Continue through the campaigns with this method.

List of campaigns

This list contains links to information about the different campaigns that are available in Heroes of Might and Magic III: background, heroes, strategies, walkthroughs, and the like. Campaigns unavailable at the start of the game are given in italics.

Restoration of Erathia

Armageddon's Blade

Shadow of Death

Heroes Chronicles

Horn of the Abyss

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Some may find the information in this section subjective or irrelevant.

As every campaign is a set of scenarios connected together, there should be special tactics and strategy for playing campaigns, regarding that you will upgrade your heroes throughout the campaign and, in most cases, one or more heroes should be invincible, as their loss will make you lose the whole game. These are the tips how to play campaigns in the most effective way:

Protect by all means the hero or heroes who should be invincible. Make sure they have a proper army and enough spell points, and avoid unnecessary combats. Remember that retreat and surrender is also considered a loss, so they have no right to do it.
If it requires adequate time (both game and real life time), don't win easy scenarios until your hero or heroes who should advance to the next scenario get highest level possible. Take experience from treasure chests, kill wandering monsters (not allowing them to join or flee), and visit all creature banks so as to kill their guardians and get additional experience (moreover, some of them provide artifacts which can be sacrificed unless your hero is evil). If wandering monsters protect nothing important, don't block a strategic path and are unaccessible for the enemy, wait until their amount grows, so as to get more experience.
If multiple heroes advance to the next scenario, upgrade them all so as to form a powerful team of heroes. Avoid using in battles the hero who has already hit the level limit and don't pick treasure chests by that hero. If you have a choice which heroes will advance to the next scenario, choose the ones with the best specialties and secondary skills.
Visit all objects giving experience on the map: Learning Stones, Trees of Knowledge, Altars of Sacrifice. For the latter, try to get as many artifacts as possible if your hero has good or neutral alignment (artifacts are usually guarded, therefore you will also get experience for winning combats), and sacrifice superfluous troops if your hero has evil or neutral alignment. Apart from getting artifacts on the map and in creature banks, you can buy them on Black Market, from Artifact Merchants if the town can build this structure, or get them by saving Shipwreck Survivors. A good idea is to sacrifice all artifacts you have prior to the very end of the scenario, as something like Sword of Judgement may help you very much in tough battles in the mid-game, but won't help a lot when the game is almost won. Build Battle Scholar Academies in Dungeon towns.
Try to visit a Tree of Knowledge only when your hero is on the penultimate possible level (e.g. if the limit is level 30, visit it on level 29 so as to get level 30), as every new level requires more and more experience points, thus being harder to obtain. If level limit is 30 and there are two Trees, visit them on level 28 and 29, if there are three ones, visit them on level 27, 28 and 29, and so on. However, if the highest possible level is unreachable (mostly on small maps), visit Trees of Knowledge first, so as to have some extra points of experience above the amount necessary to get the level.
On the last day of a month, reload the game until there is a month of a creature, preferably a one with decent HPs (e.g. Pegasus or Serpent Fly), and kill wandering monsters appearing on the map by the heroes who need to get experience.
Learn only those secondary skills which are useful.
Learn all spells there are on the map, mainly in towns' Mage Guilds (if a spell is lacking, consider visiting shrines and hiring heroes with spell specialties or Scholar secondary skill). Learn even spells which are considered useless or used rarely, as if a Scholar learns you a spell you already have, you will get instead +1 to a primary skill which is way more useful. Build Mage Guilds according to main heroes' Wisdom level (e.g. if they have at most Advanced Wisdom, build 4th level Mage Guild in every town where it's available).
Visit all objects upgrading primary skills on the map, such as Mercenary Camp, Marletto Tower, Star Axis, Garden of Revelation, Arena and so on.
Build structures which upgrade primary skills in your Tower, Inferno, Stronghold, and Fortress towns, and visit them by all heroes who should advance to the next scenario.
An easy way to get necessary spells and primary skills is Town Portal spell on Advanced or Expert level of Earth Magic.
If you have allies, keep in mind that they play their own game, and they will flag mines, pick resources, kill wandering monsters etc. on their own. Don't rely on them as AI usually plays very bad, and they won't build anything important for your gameplay (Mage Guilds, primary skills objects, etc.) Moreover, they can win the scenario prematurely (e.g. by getting the artifact which is victory condition), not allowing you to upgrade your heroes or to get something important for the next scenario. Hire heroes in their towns so as to get as much as possible in their area, and block their way to important objects on the map. If a hero has to advance to the next scenario and should not be invincible (i.e may lose a combat), consider attacking wandering monsters with one weak unit (e.g. Pikeman), retreating, and hiring this hero in an allied town so as to control allied area and take the best from it. Level, skills, spells, and artifacts will remain.
When playing on Impossible difficulty, consider taking Estates on a main hero or two (especially in HotA). The extra gold income will dramatically lessen the impact of starting with no resources.

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