The lands are charred straight through the middle by the chaotic malefice of the burning hells. There is only one way of stopping this disasterous onslaught. The Cape of the Undead King, the artifact once worn by the single most powerful hero these lands have ever seen, is able to make them flee.
Author: Karl K (Timonium, MD), 13-04-2025 22:57 Like Great quests, challenge, and patterns - Hell Bursts Some of the best quests I’ve seen, fun patterned map structure and great cat and mouse with the Hell forces
Early game:
- I like how every lighthouse has a refugee camp next to it so you can get some crew to explore with. In general this mapmaker is great at designing with patterns that are both recognizable and fun.
- I thought this might be too easy at first when I optimized the first part and took Blazewarp right away -- then the enemies started coming through the gates with zounds of units to take it back. It’s fun if that is planned to let you see it but then get chased underground.
Midgame:
- The underground is fun because of the quests instead of just treasure. It’s fun how you can explore the caverns underground to find quests without being blocked by combats at every turn.
- This map has some of the most creative quests I’ve seen (spoilers):
- the deck of cards guarded by devils with the hut nearby
- the sacrificing peasants to enter hell
- the little vignette where the guy asks you to rescue his halfling brother and then a vampire is facing him down in the tunnel
- collecting rogues over multiple weeks without getting trapped
- “come up with 50 sulfur to get through” being enough to make you question it, but doable.
- Or 100 crystals but with a fight nearby to get it.
- The long gauntlet of troglodytes and dragons was a really fun endurance challenge and putting a 90000 gp gate in front of it was a great way to signal “This isn’t just randomly hard, there will be something that’s worth it.”
- The Valley of Dragons is fun and a fun quest idea although requiring the expensive dragons made it not worth turning the quest in.
Endgame:
- I finished on day 634 (158 days), score 364, so this was a hard slow map.
- The way of making red super threatening with hidden cities worked great and was fun. I spent the whole game harassing them when their town portal hero wasn’t home and then running away.
- Collecting the peasants was not boring because the enemy kept landing on the island, but I sitill feel it could’ve been shorter. I don’t see the point of collecting 1200 halflings when it takes five solid months when there’s a throng of angels guarding and a nine-month time limit.
- It was fun to finally figure out the pattern behind all the keys and hero quest gates, and having each key area be a themed set of challenges to win a themed hero was super fun too.
There are no roads on this entire map and that works great – it means you really need units that can navigate the terrain. I think this map would be even more fun with Town Portal banned so you would have to do army management and local defense through the whole thing, and would focus on winning with peasants because you’d never take over the entire map.
Author: magda (poland), 15-02-2010 15:37 Like a question where can i find this artifact? i uncovered all the map - all two levels and i am not sure what i should have been looking for
Karl K (Timonium, MD) writes:
13-04-2025 22:59
You have to combine the three pieces - Hell Bursts
Cloak of the Dragon King is a combination artifact so you have to equip all three pieces you find inside Hell. The last one you equip will offer you to create the artifact.
Author: MiuMiu (Faraway, Kingdom), 21-01-2010 05:00 A comment Played this map. My starting castle was Conflux.
In my opinion:
+ quests: made a game slightly more intriguing all the way till the middle phase.
+ a player's isolation at the beginning; gives the player time to expand and explore your personal territory without getting pressurized.
+ nice layout and graphic design of the map.
- Basically straightforward linear game play, starting from the middle phase: all those spells available and computer's rather weak development/or setting-up at the beginning makes combats brainless and map is locked locked down completely.
- I'd prefer if instead of peasant harvesting, a player could do some hard quest in the end (like defeating some really strong isolated red's hero). To make things even harder, seer's hut could be set with a time limit.
Author: KillingMoon (Scotland), 17-01-2010 22:17 An excellent one! Very well done map. I played as rampart (teal). Actually, I tried pink first, in the underground, but I saw that area was not so nicely designed for exploration,so I quickly switched to teal; much nicer.
I've played for about 4 months game-time, 2 enemies vanquished and some damage done to others. I'm not a regular player, but the difficulty seems alright for me. No bugs noticed. The map is really well designed!!!
Author: maximilian (japan, tokyo), 16-01-2010 01:11 great map! i liked playing it. i tought it would be rather hard to get 1k peasants but i was wrong. nice quests around the map too.
good work!
Author: Sontu Andrei Silviu (Bucharest, Romania), 15-01-2010 15:43 First vote I voted it just to get things started. I'd like to hear from you about this map! You will probably like it if you also liked "a beautiful world" which i've also uploaded some months ago.
Cheers and have fun playing! :)
Jerbear (Canada) writes:
31-10-2024 20:45
Feedback - Hell Bursts
My only complaint thus far is that the "area" has no exit and now my best hero and army are trapped there, waiting patiently for heroes to enter until I meet a stronger one I can't defeat and am forced to retreat. No DD or TP or FLY thus far, both Lvl5 mage guilds built but no spell research either :(
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