Allied Forces Scenario – **** Difficulty
Target 1 – Take Fan Castle West Post and Fan Castle South Fort in 10 minutes.
Target 2 – Xu Huang does not withdraw.
Target 3 – Bases within Fan Castle do not fall.
Strategy – This is a tough one as once Fan Castle floods you’ll have a hard time stopping the enemy from getting at least 1 base. It depends where you start as you’re either going to focus on the west enemies or the south ones by Xu Huang. Usually it’s the latter.
So attacking Xu Huang are Xiang Lang, Liao Hua, Xiang Chong and Mi Zhu. Mi Fang is also to the south but once you hear about the discontent officers (from Cao Ren), hurry to Mi Fang as he will switch to your side. If you can hustle to Fu Shi Ren, he will join you too. But if it’s after the flood, both will choose not to defect! So you must hurry if you want to do this. Because not too long after you defeat one set of enemies and hurry to the other defecting officer, Guan Ping will arrive and the flood will commence. While you’re doing this back and forth traveling you’ll want to finish Target 1 up by taking the south fort and then the west post.
Since this is assuming you took the Xu Huang route first and then went to Fu Shiren, defeat the officers around here (Wang Ping, Wu Ban, Ma Liang) and then hurry to Fan Castle. Sima Yi and any allied officer has a problem if left alone for a second so protecting the bases is damn hard especially considering you have to take those two bases for Target 1 ahead of time.
Shen Yi and Liu Feng attack the southeast base. Zhang Bao heads to the southwest watchpost, Lu Yi / Yi Ji in the northwest, and Ying Dan / Guan Ping attack Cao Ren’s main base. Once this onslaught is dealt with, your army makes the counterattack.
Also other enemy forces that haven’t moved the entire battle begin to attack – Zhou Cang, Wang Fu and Chen Zhen notably. Only a few more reinforcement officers are left. First it’s Guan Suo and Guan Xing in the southeast and then Zhang Fei near Guan Yu’s camp. Those two are tough to deal with, you’ll definitely want to save before engaging if at all possible. I wouldn’t advise fighting them together – might be a good idea to isolate Zhang Fei and try to trample him to death if your horse is able enough.
Sun Jian’s Forces Scenario – ***** Difficulty
Target 1 – Open Fan Castle West Gate or Fan Castle South Gate in 5 minutes.
Target 2 – Defeat Guan Yu and Zhang Fei in 10 minutes.
Target 3 – Player maintains 30% or more life throughout.
Strategy – For once we’re dealt with a more lenient life % rate at 30%. Still, you are going against Liu Bei’s main army and you are pressed to defeat Zhang Fei and Guan Yu in 10 minutes.
A few weaker enemy units start by your base. Take out Chen Zhen to the north, then Mi Zhu and Xiang Lang. Thing is you have 5 minutes to take out one of the gates so you’ll want to help one of them now. To the east is Lu Yi and Wu Ban by the Fan Castle South Gate. Defeating Wu Ban and the Guard Captains clears out the area for ladders and a siege ramp. Remember to account for the fact that the siege process in general takes forever so you may wish to skip a few of the aforementioned officers along the way to Wu Ban.
Once the door is taken out (or 5 minutes is up), the Shu army sends a boatload of officers to the south gate, including some of the real brutes. All told you’ll have Meng Da, Zhang Bao, Zhang Fei, Guan Suo, Wang Fu and God of War Guan Yu. Fortunately this makes for an easy completion of Target 2, though defeating all of those officers (especially when two of them are Zhang Fei / Guan Yu) is anything but easy.
The stage clears up after this and all of your targets are done, besides the 30% health maintaining one. Zhou Cang is in the southeast base, Guan Xing in the northwest, Liao Hua in the center or roaming, and Liu Bei at his northeast base. By the time you take out the two former generals, Wei reinforcements will be here to aid Liu Bei.
Zhu Ling, Xu Huang, and Yu Jin in the northwest, and also Xu Zhu, Jiang Ji, and Man Chong in the southeast. On top of that Sima Yi appears by Liu Bei with Yue Jin, Lu Jian, and Xu Shang. Take out one force at a time, preferably whichever exterior force you’re closest to first (likely Xu Huang), though both forces run into the castle anyway so you’re bound to run into them all.
Towards the enemy camp will be the rest of the reinforcements and Liu Bei’s subgenerals like Ying Dan, Wang Ping, Liu Feng, Ma Liang and eventually Xuande. There is not a lot of room to manuever around here which can be good but also bad if you’re being overwhelmed.
Shu Forces Scenario – ***** Difficulty
Target 1 – Succeed in flooding the castle.
Target 2 – Guan Ping does not withdraw.
Target 3 – Take Fan Castle North Yard, Fan Castle South Yard and Fan Castle Watchpost in 10 minutes.
Strategy – Succeeding in these tasks is much easier than the previous two battles. At the start you are to clear the surrounding enemies so start with Dong Chao just north of you and then go by Fu Shi Ren and Mi Fang, who will defect and try to beat you up. Yu Jin also is around here, so take him out and then begin on the southeast officers; Dong Heng, Zhu Huan and Yue Jin. Worse yet Xu Huang will be hunting you down any minute.
By the time you take him out Guan Ping will make the flood scene occur. Jiang Qin is in the Fan Castle South Yard and you need to take this anyway, and then you can make your way through the Fan Castle Watchpost and then the Fan Castle North Yard for Target 3. Xu Sheng should be guarding the Fan Castle North Yard.
About this time there will be a couple enemy reinforcements en route, notably Pan Zhang and Lu Xun in the northwest and Sima Yi in the southeast. Really though there is not much else to do besides mop up the few enemies left in Zhu Ran, Jiang Ji, Man Chong, and Han Dang.
Dong Zhao and Sima Yi assault the south part of Fan Castle, and once they’re done you can make the final push on Niu Jin, Cao Chun, Xiahou Shang and Cao Ren. Cao Ren has incredible defense. Also if you took a bit longer, Gan Ning appears as more reinforcements in the center.
Lu Bu’s Forces Scenario – ***** Difficulty
Target 1 – Open Fan Castle West Gate and Fan Castle South Gate in 10 minutes.
Target 2 – Take all bases.
Target 3 – Player maintains 30% of life.
Strategy – This is a Diao Chan Musou Mode Stage.
Some of the targets are similar to the ones above but not exactly (for instance, you need to take both gates for Target 1 this time). This needs to be your focus right away – defeat the officers immediately around the west gate and then work your way to the east one. Plenty of officers meet you to the west gate, like Jiang Ji, Dong Heng and Xiahou Shang. Then Yin Shang and Man Chong right next to the gate. After they are all defeated hopefully you can take down the gate before the south units are in trouble.
Hurry south once the west gate goes. The problem is, the enemy forces charge towards the first gate that opens. So you’ll have to make haste going south and making the siege go quickly. Chen Jiao and Yu Jin are down here, and Cao Zhen drops from above. There really won’t be much at this gate once you break through it, you’re basically just doing this for Target 1.
Back at the west gate where the enemy is gathering (or the south if you took that one first) you’ll find Wen Pin, Dong Chao, Lu Jian, Cheng Yu, Cao Xiu, Hua Xin, and Deng Ai. Some impressive names but in DW terms they’re all generic officers. After they are all defeated is a good time to get the exterior enemy bases (ignore the northwest one for now).
Head inside to the center to fight Dai Ling, Wang Shuang, Sima Zhao, Lei Bo, Cao Chun, Zhang He, Guo Huai and then Sima Yi. They don’t all come at once of course, but you fight most of them at first and then Guo Huai and Sima Yi.
Probably while the above is going on, Xu Huang comes with friends; Wen Qin, Yue Jin, Zhu Ling, Li Dian, Xu Shang, and Niu Jin. You’ll need to deal with them if you want to keep all of the enemy bases. Meanwhile, Zhang Xun and Dian Wei are guarding Cao Ren’s fort so you’ll need to dispatch them. Also, when Cao Ren uses his special and boosts his defense you should run because his attacks take off a ton.
everytime i got to Yue Jin and facing Xu Huang i always got message from Guan Yu that the water attack is no working anymore and should change strategies. Why?
i’m playing Guan Yu. Am i not fast enough to defeat all the officers? Specially tp defeat Xu Huang really need extra time
Hey Charles. I’m trying to figure out your problem, not entirely sure though. You might be right that you’re not defeating officers fast enough – I bet if you don’t clear out enough officers the flood attack won’t happen.
For me, I usually ride a horse to the south end to clear out Xu Huang and those idiots by that gate. I guess I’ve never seen the message about Guan Ping not being able to cause the flood – Guan Yu will always stop and tell Guan Ping to ‘head up stream and release the water’, or something like that.
So yea, I would focus on defeating officers quicker I guess. Fan Castle has always been a tricky stage for me – it is very hard to prevent all the interior bases from falling if you are on the Allied Side.
ive had that problem too. i leave south gate and xu huang alone untill last and i use red hare for speed and i played as guan ping to have a few more seconds it is all mainly about speed
I am playing as the one of the characters that are inside the castle, and cant figure out how to exit that damn castle.