Ever wondered how DoaE plays without a full party? A little extra grinding is needed for 2 or 3 officer quests, but it is doable.
First of all, grinding becomes very difficult with 2 members so in general I’ll build up with a few extra characters to make the process go faster – or just use the speedup function on an NES emulator. Each gate / castle battle though should be defeated with the set officer limit, 2 or 3. Because each battle is vastly difficult, you will need to rack your brain to figure out which officers give you the best chance. Often times it isn’t a tiger officer because of the low soldier counts so you will need to be recruiting quality officers from the enemy. Like Li Ru for example, who is one of the best tacticians you can get for a while despite his low STR. Li Ru’s value lies in his total TP which is crucial in the Dong Zhuo region, arguably the hardest part of the game in a 2-person challenge.
Chang An is probably the toughest battle you’ll face for a while, with Li Ru and someone like Guan Yu. Chances are you’ll need to level up quite a bit to defeat Dong Zhuo, Lu Bu, Jia Xu and Zhang Ji. I had to level up all the way to 474 soldiers for Guan Yu (and the Tong Xian tactic) to defeat those four. Shortly after you will learn Yan Re and then you should be able to blaze through Yuan Shu’s region (literally and figuratively).
Li Ru can then be ousted for a more balanced officer like Xu Zhe aka Dan Fu. The Bow and Trident will help a lot too, ensuring that you do not have too much difficulty getting through the Yuan Shao region. At least until the Ji Zhou battle. I like to leave this alone until I finish Jing Zhou, which is easier despite a challenging battle at Chang Sha Castle. Recruiting Pang Tong should make the Ji Zhou Castle battle extremely easy, and should set you up well for the Shu Region. Abuse the Bei Ji tactic for Pang Tong, especially if you can use Hong Shui on your enemies.
You might want to pair Zhang Ren, Yan Yan or Ma Dai with Pang Tong around this time because of the soldier difference. While those three officers are not as talented as Zhao Yun or Guan Yu, their soldier difference is a big help.
Once you get into Wu, you should be close to having An Sha. Ma Liang has the highest INT for an An Sha tactician but you might want to use Fa Zheng who is just a little behind in the INT category but has 2000 extra soldiers. Use him until you can get someone good in Wu like Lu Su, Zhou Yu, Kan Ze, Zhu Ge Jin, etc. Defeating Zhou Yu is not as hard as you think – just have Fa Zheng / Lu Su be tactician and pair whichever one you have with Zhu Ge Liang. With any luck you should be able to An Sha Zhou Yu early on in that battle, and then Kan Ze.
No trouble until you reach the Sun Quan Battle at Jian Ye. Do your typical An Sha strategy on Tai Si Ci and Lu Sun. Then use Gui Huan to retreat and have Zhu Ge Liang be the tactician in this battle. Sun Quan should then be a pushover – just cast Bei Ji on Zhu Ge Liang, and have him spam Huo Shen to quickly denounce Sun Quan.
As you enter Wei, you get Jiang Wei at Guang Ling Castle. You now have your two best characters for this 2 man challenge, in Zhu Ge Liang and Jiang Wei. Jiang Wei should be the tactician most of the time so An Sha can be used by those two characters. Fighting Cao Pi however you may wish to have Zhu Ge Liang be tactician so you can use Jin Xian to heal and do the Bei Ji – Huo Shen / Shui Long strategy to maul all officers with Cao Pi including Cao Pi himself.
Which brings us to the Si Ma Yi battles. Chances are with two characters you will have a hard time sustaining your TP if you are using Ce Mian. My only luck in the 2 person challenge fighting Si Ma Yi was by An Sha-ing his officers and then hoping and praying that Si Ma Yi does not Wan Fu himself and restore all of his soldiers. With only two characters attacking, and weak characters at that, Wan Fu is likely going to happen a few times unfortunately. Bring Power Pils and use them when he gets below 25000 Soldiers or so. Don’t waste them before that though otherwise you’ll run out if he Wan Fu’s himself.
How about a one-man challenge? i’m sure lots of battles could be completed with just one character but I’d have a hard time believing beating the game is possible using one character in every gate / castle battle!
Damn, impressive. Try a one man run! I bet you couldn’t get through the Yellow Turban stage.
*salute*
All of china with but two generals… Now that’s the stuff of legends!
Sadly, I am venturing forward on a one-man journey. It requires ridiculous amount of grinding (like, you’ll need Yan Re at Hu Lao Gate to beat Lu Bu and Li Ru with Chen Deng!)
Currently stuck at Nan Yang because Yuan Shu and friends simply have too many soldiers for Li Ru to take out. Been using Li Ru and his Yan Re for some time :) His attack is so pathetic though.
If I get by this battle I’ll be able to use Xu Zhe.
I see that you’ve been busy with the site. I haven’t been here in since October. Good luck. Hope everyhting goes smoothly for you. I just wanted to see if I could snag a DOAE2 ROM. I’m having withdrawals. Can you help a brotha out?
I know this probably isn’t the most appropriate location for this post / comment so feel free to move or delete it if you want.
-Bennysan
Wow that’s cool. I just barely managed to kill Sima Yi with Xun Yu, Cao Zhang, Taishi Ci, Zhang Liao, and Lu Sun. I moved on to the mods after that.
Whatup Bennysan. Good to see you.
http://www.lordyuanshu.com/DLs/ROMs/DoaE2.zip
That’s the link for DoaE 2 :)
As for the one-man journey…I couldn’t do it. But I think Bennysan got far doing it…
Hello,
W0w. . I like this game..
wow this is amazing. i look forward for seeing more